


Person of Interest episode notes

by spacemutineer



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Episode Transcript, Gen, Meta, Novelization, Recap, Seasons 1 and 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 225,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26185345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/pseuds/spacemutineer
Summary: These are the notes I made for many episodes of seasons 1 and 2 of Person of Interest, some blend of transcript, recap, and partial novelization written as I watched, along with occasional thoughts and commentary.Most of these are not complete transcripts but close, focusing on character development and interaction. I will be posting gradually as I clean them up.
Comments: 47
Kudos: 23





	1. Introduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please read this first, thanks!

**TL;DR**

These are the notes I made for many episodes of seasons 1 and 2 of Person of Interest, some blend of transcript, recap, and partial novelization written as I watched, along with occasional thoughts and commentary. Degrees of case plot description vary by episode from the bare minimum to full detail.

Most of these are not complete transcripts but instead focus on detailing dialogue and action in scenes of character development and interaction. I will be posting gradually as I clean them up for public consumption.

* * *

**The long version:**

When I first started writing for POI, I found myself having to refer to the episodes frequently to get the details I needed. At first, I decided to write a few scene transcripts for myself. But I wanted more detail to get things right, so I started writing out the scene as I saw and felt it while I watched.

And I found I really enjoyed doing it. It was incredibly helpful as writing practice, helping me get better at describing what I see. That's always what I find hard in writing, translating the images and scenes in my mind into text. I can't recommend this enough to others. It's fun and it's an excellent way to learn.

A few warnings:

These are not all complete transcripts. Some are, particularly in season 2 as I leaned more into the idea of practicing description, but most are not. 

Not all episodes are included. I prefer the first two seasons of POI so I focus there, but even then I skipped episodes from time to time for various reasons. I'll leave blank chapters for those as I pass them. Perhaps someday I'll actually get back to them. Season 2 is not currently complete, although I do intend to write up more episodes as further practice.

I'm including my notes at the end, which include my own personal headcanon and interpretation. Your mileage may vary. I also try to keep lists of character landmarks and injuries in the episode, but these are not comprehensive, especially since I skip some episodes entirely.

I will be posting as I clean them up but not on any particular schedule. 

I hope you find them interesting at least. I enjoyed making them.


	2. POI 1x01 - Pilot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a suicidal man is saved by a man who already killed himself in every way but the physical. What they need is a purpose, and together they have one.

### POI 1x01 - Pilot

#### Landmarks

  * John and Finch meet and start working together
  * Fusco is enlisted against his will
  * Carter meets John and tries to help him and when that fails, starts to chase him



#### Injuries

  * **Reese**
    * Cuts his hand on mirror glass
    * Knocked out with the butt of a rifle
      * John concussion count: 1
    * Rolling car crash in the back of a cop car, no seatbelt
  * **Fusco**
    * Rolling car crash in the driver's seat, belted
    * Shot four times in the back by Reese while wearing his vest



* * *

And everything starts with the last time Reese will ever be truly happy, lying half naked in soft white sheets with this beautiful woman who loves him. He is smiling in a way he never will again after this day. In this moment, John and Jessica were free.

He gives his speech, the piece of text that will define him.

"When you find that one person who connects you to the world, you become someone different."

He and Jessica kiss. She gently claws at his collarbone, running her fingers along it, and a scratch he already has. Maybe she made it herself. It's interesting to make a point to show him already minorly wounded. His major injuries, inside and out, come later. He reaches his hands up her back, delicately grazing her skin and the soft lacy grey on pink chemise she's wearing.

"When that person is taken from you, what do you become then?"

And here is Reese now, at his lowest point. This is the saddest and most lost John will ever be, homeless, filthy, riding the subway to nowhere. His hair is long and unkempt, graying now, as is his scraggly beard. He looks sunburned, although it's clearly winter. Maybe windburn, or a touch of frostbite. He's wearing multiple layers of old castoff clothes. He's been living on the streets, and it shows. He keeps his eyes low, engages no one. His heart is empty.

A gaggle of punk garbage kids walks into the car. The cocky head jackass with a diamond earring carries his gold necklace in his mouth. He looks like he's wearing a bridle.

Immediately he hassles two other guys, stepping up in their faces. One of them pulls up his shirt to show he's packing. Mr. Gold Chain tries to talk shit to them about "a real gun" but he's about to learn a lesson or two about what's real.

His name is Anton according to his boys, and he does John a favor here by laying down some useful notes for the future. He's getting new hardware next week. Or maybe it's more accurate to say he's providing new hardware to a more deserving cause next week. If only he knew that.

He sees Reese, half passed out in his seat, bottle in his hand. "Besides, when we take the car, we don't get to meet new friends. Look at this guy," Anton says with a laugh. He won't be laughing long. He thinks John's asleep so he reaches for the bottle. It's a poor choice. Reese grabs him hard by the wrist. Anton manages to pull the whiskey away from him but he is surprised by the balls on this homeless guy to try to stand up to him like that. 

"You didn't bring enough for the whole group?"

Reese sighs. The only desire left to him is to be alone, the only hope to pass out, but the world won't even give him that. 

"I have to teach you about sharing." 

The guys lean in and hold for a moment while John makes his choice. Then he does what the punks deserve, if not anything remotely a good idea. He wrenches one forward to hit the pole and kicks another. Standing, he knocks the third in the throat and elbows the fourth in the face when he tries to take him from behind. Finally, he has Anton by the throat. He doesn't kill him, although he easily could. Instead he drops him to the floor, choking and coughing. 

There is such horror in John's face. Wherever he goes, people suffer. All he has to offer anyone now is violence. Distraught, he covers his eyes.

And we realize this is security cam footage. One of our other characters is observing, but she works quietly. The first of many yellow boxes goes around Reese. He doesn't know about the Machine and so his box shouldn't be yellow yet, but it will be right soon enough. The ten thousand eyes are watching.

At the station, we hear Carter for the first time as she walks into a room with another cop.

"I'll need a statement from the bum. Which hospital did they take him to?"

"He declined treatment." Yeah, he does that.

The punks are lined up against the wall, worse for wear. Everyone is beaten in the face except for Anton, who smirks. John left his pretty mug, too bad. Carter is instantly repulsed. 

And then she watches the cam footage. It's wild. Reese takes them all out bare handed. She turns back to the guy she was talking to. _Are you seeing this?_ He points forward. Her future is in there.

And John is already watching her from behind reinforced glass, sitting casually, his arm up, his leg crossed. Who knows how many times he's been arrested. But she's his next obstacle, so he sizes her up.

She comes in to see him and gives him a small smile. She feels sorry for him. Her kindness here will change both their lives.

"You know, you could have done me a favor," she says as she makes sure the door is shut before she ends her sentence, "and let those guys land a couple more punches."

Reese says nothing, turning a plastic water cup in his hands.

"Question for you. Lookin' at that tape, I'd say you spent some time in the service." She sits on the desk, leans into him. Her eyes are bright. She's trying to pull him out of the hole she can see he's in by using her intelligence, kindness, and intuition. "But you don't learn how to fight like that in the regular army. So what were you, special forces? Delta?"

John shifts. She's hit a nerve, reading him as he reads other people. But still he says nothing. She nods. 

"I'm Carter. You didn't give us a name."

Finally he speaks. "You know, it's funny. Seems like the only time you need a name now is when you're in trouble." Finch can speak to that. He has a thousand names for just that purpose. John lifts his blue eyes to her. "So am I in trouble?"

She shrugs. "I don't know, you tell me. You're the one living on the street." She calls his bluff. And for the first time, John is almost pleased. She's got fire, this one. But still, he says nothing, answers nothing. Again, she nods. She's seen this before, even felt it a little herself.

"Yeah, makin' that transition back can be tough. Some guys I knew got a little lost, needed a little help adjusting." Reese is amused by this, her attempt to reach him. For him, he's far beyond lost. He's just waiting for the sea to finally take him. She raises her eyebrows, opening, asking him to meet her halfway. "You need some help?" But all Reese does is drink. And she resigns herself to his reticence. He's not ready or able to take help. So all she can do is figure out who he is and go from there.

"Of course, some other guys I knew," she says as she quietly picks up his glass from the inside only, "they'd done so many evil things, they felt like they needed the punishment." She turns on the cam footage of John's beatdown of the punks. And this stings. His eyes won't stay still. They flit around low, guilty, cornered with truth. "That sound more like your story?"

But still she gets nothing from him, and Carter is frustrated now. She takes the cup, still carefully held from the inside. "Excuse me for a second." Off she goes to the fingerprint lab.

Some lawyer type guy in a grey suit walks into the police station and points to Reese. "I'm here for my client." From behind the glass, his eye framed in a gap in the reinforcement wire, John looks on, suspicious.

"Wow. Wow, wow." Carter's guy at the lab has something, and it's a doozy. "Your guy's prints were found in half a dozen crime scenes over the years. Open warrants in four different countries... Who you got down there, Carter? The angel of death?" Carter is horrified.

Luckily, Reese is walking out with the lawyer at that moment. "I appreciate the help, counselor, but who's picking up..." and he sees just as he's saying it, "the tab?" Two burly men in black surround John. He's captive again. "Our employer wants to have a word with you." They stuff him into a black town car just as Carter runs out to try to find him. Too late, Joss.

It's morning now, early, and the goons drive Reese up to a lonely spot under the Queensboro bridge. A man is standing nearby, still and straight, hands in his coat pockets, watching the water.

And Harold Finch turns with both his shoulders as he must to see John Reese. We pull behind him so we can't yet see his face. 

John strolls up. He looks like hell. He's wearing old leather work boots and the laces dangle untied. His multiple layers of clothes to keep him warm are half unzipped, as wild and unkempt as his hair.

"Do I... owe you money? 'Cause I'm, uh... running a little short at the moment." He flutters empty pockets in his big castoff coat.

We hear Finch's voice for the first time. "You don't owe me anything, Mr. Reese." And John slows to a stop. This is far more complicated and dangerous than he anticipated. "That's the name you prefer, isn't it?" Finch is dressed cleanly, formally. His personality is in his primness and the light spiking to his hair. There's a touch of wildness in him too, just suppressed. He's wearing his round glasses, the easiest way to differentiate his old life he is in now with the new one he is about to start with Reese. He turns back to the water. "I know you've had several." 

It occurs to him to reassure John. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell anyone about you."

John tries to play it cool. "You don't _know_ anything about me."

"I know exactly everything about you, Mr. Reese. I know about the work you used to do for the government. I know about the doubts you came to have about that work. I know that the government, along with everybody else, thinks you're dead."

And now Reese is incensed. He starts striding up toward Finch, anger and confusion in his eyes. The burly guys by the car pick up on the motion and start to follow. Finch holds his hand up, halting their progress. Reese looks back, surprised. This man is not afraid of him. He comes up beside him. 

"I know you've spent the last couple of months trying to drink yourself to death." Finch looks him in the eyes, analyzing. His empathy for this ultimately decent man laid low comes through even when he is trying to be strong. He looks back to the water. "I know you're contemplating more efficient ways to do it." 

Reese is gutted. How does this man know all of this? Why does he care?

"So you see, knowledge is not my problem. Doing something with that knowledge... that's where you'd come in." Reese is dumbfounded, silent. "And you can call me Mr. Finch." He almost never will.

Finch thinks. There are hints of gray in his hair, tired shade under his eyes, worry lines set into his brow. Loss has worn him down too. He knows what he wants to express, but the question is how to say it. 

"I think you and I can help one another." He looks up again briefly. He knows when to connect. Finch has much better instincts with people than he believes he does. "I don't think you need a psychiatrist, or a support group, pills..."

Reese scoffs. "What do I need?"

"You need a purpose." Finch's voice is beautiful here, soft and honest. That need is as true for him as it is for John. He bows his head a little as he says it, giving the truth its due weight and respect. And he goes back to his proposal voice. "More specifically, you need a job."

Finally, John is listening. They go for a ride to midtown. Outside, it's a noisy, bustling place. Poor Finch is so stiff. He has to turn his whole body to look at anything. Here he is ever tracking Reese.

"Eight million people," he says as they start walking along the sidewalk. "You know what they all have in common? None of them knows what happens next." They stop. "Someone is murdered in New York City every 18 hours." Finch looks around at all the souls bustling around them, all the beating hearts. "At the end of the day, one of these people will be _gone_."

"Bad things happen to people every day." John shakes his head. "You can't stop that."

"What if you could? Not the things that happen in the heat of the moment, but so many crimes are planned... days, weeks in advance. What if you _could_ stop those?" 

It sounds like magic, but it is Finch's reason for living. He is completely serious. His entire life can be summed up in four words as _"What if you could?"_

And finally he reaches the real part of his proposal. 

"I've got a list." His face is resolved. This is a risk to discuss, but it must be done for either of them to have any hope. "A list of people who are about to be involved in very bad situations. Murders, kidnappings. The people that are on my list, they have no idea that anything's about to happen to them. Most of them are just ordinary people... like her."

He gestures up at the real reason they're here. A professional looking woman is buying a snack at a street stand.

"Her name is Diane Hansen. And this week, she's at the top of my list." He stares at Reese. He wants him to understand he is serious. This is for real. "I don't know exactly what's going to happen or what her role in it is. She might be the victim, she could be the perpetrator. All I know is that she's involved." Reese stares at this lunatic babbling in front of him. "I want you to follow her, figure out what's gonna happen... and _stop_ it from happening." And that's the proposal. Here goes nothing and everything. "So what do you think?"

John watches the woman walk away, turns back to Finch. 

"I think you're a bored rich guy. I think that woman's probably your ex-wife or someone you rode in an elevator with once, and either way, I think I'm done."

One of the bodyguards steps forward into John's path. We see John's eye just above the man's shoulder from behind. Intimidation. But when he tries to lay a hand on Reese, he gets easily thrown aside by the face and knocked directly into the other guy. They both double over, groaning, useless. Finch stands by, watches this whole thing with his jaw hanging as Reese walks away.

In some dingy cheap hotel, Reese has his shirt off and is cleaning himself up for the first time in months, shaving off the beard that easily identified him. Good thing, as the TV behind him announces that police are after a homeless man first believed to be the victim of a violent assault but who is now a person of interest in a number of crimes nationwide. (And beyond, but local TV leaves that bit out.)

John, still covered in shaving cream all over his face and hands, takes a long swig out of another bottle of rye whiskey.

He's still nursing the bottle later as he watches a samurai (of course it's samurai) movie on a terrible old VHF TV in black and white. He's lying on the bed getting drunk and watching TV in a gray t-shirt and belted jeans. His hair is cut, and he looks alive again. But this is still the broken version of him only doing the bare minimum to cope. He's still trying to drink himself to death. When he passes out, the whiskey tips onto the floor.

In his dream, she's there. It's always her, it's always there, it's always then. The best and the worst of his life, forever entwined.

Jessica's eyes catch the TV in their hotel room. She freezes.

"Hey, sweetheart, what's wrong?" he says. At first he's laughing, then he knows it's serious. "Jess, what's wrong?"

She's watching the day that gave all of America national PTSD on TV, experiencing it as everyone did unless they were right there in the city, watching hopelessly and uselessly on television.

A phone rings, waking Reese in the present. He goes to answer the phone, but it's hard to move. His arm is ziptied to the top of the bed frame. This is a different bed than the one he passed out on.

"You need to understand, Mr. Reese," Finch says once John picks up the receiver. He'll hear this voice in his ear for years to come. "The information I have is incomplete, but it's _never_ wrong." The Machine is never wrong, at least not in its assessment of raw facts. If it made mistakes in that way, it would just be human. What Finch made is so much more than that.

"You need to know what it would be like to be forced to listen to someone get murdered, and not be able to do anything about it." This is the hell that Finch lives in. He knows, oh god, he knows and bears that weight, and all these lives slip through his fingers anyway. All he does in this dark afterlife is listen to death for eternity.

John is horrified as Finch hangs up on him. This is some twisted psychopath game. Is this man going to kill someone just to prove some lunacy to him?

He's starting to work on his ziptie when the screaming starts in the adjoining room. A woman, and then there is banging, the sound of bodies and fists and furniture. John's initial reaction, instinctive, irresistible, is to rise to help, but he's caught on the bed frame still. Glass is shattering next door. This is a murder happening as he's sitting here. 

With no other way to release himself fast enough to help, John throws the bedside lamp into the mirror nearby to give himself a tool. He takes a glass shard and cuts the ziptie along with his hand, but he's free. He shoves his way through the adjoining doors and tumbles into the room. Ahead of him is a speaker. The room is quiet otherwise. In the distance, we see Finch out of focus. He's sitting with his back to the door. He's been patiently waiting.

We join him in the next room. He is so regretful and guilty listening to this. This is a failure, a death at least partially on his hands. It weighs on him. He will never be free of his complicity in allowing this to happen. This human life was lost, and didn't have to be.

"Too late," he says, turning himself stiffly to look up at Reese when he comes in. "This recording is three years old."

Reese is stunned, still half-drunk, full of adrenaline. His hand is bleeding. He can't catch his breath.

"A woman murdered in this room by her husband." Harold stands and holds out an old newspaper, a headline about homicide splashed across it. "For the insurance."

There is no time for delicacy, another life is at stake. And so Finch goes directly for the jugular. 

"You were too late for her. Just like you were too late for your friend Jessica. You were halfway around the world when she was killed."

The mention of Jessica is too much. Reese can't take any more, can't just stand here and listen to this, all of this. He rushes forward and grabs Finch in a blur of motion, jamming his elbow up tight to Finch's throat and pinning him against the wall. Their faces are both red as Reese hisses into Finch's ear, an inch away.

"What the hell do you know about it?" 

"It's the truth." Finch will not defend himself except with words. He has his hand on Reese's arm out of instinct, but he's not fighting back. Instead, he talks fast. "You left the government because they lied to you. I _never will_. I think all you wanted to do is _protect_ people." 

And Reese drops his arms and stumbles away, heartbroken, in shock. Not knowing what to do, where to go, he drops into the chair Finch had been sitting in, lost. 

Still against the wall, Finch swallows and tries to gather himself, tugging his collar away from his neck a little to give himself enough space for a small breath. He knows he isn't going to be immediately murdered now at least. Now they will talk. What is wonderful about Finch is that he is scared all of the time but he always does it anyway, the definition of bravery. 

"That's a wiretap recording." Reese finally notices the reel to reel player and uses his well-honed expertise. He is sweating and flushed, and his voice sounds stifled, caught in his lungs. He is awash in frustrated grief and rage, just holding himself from tears by will. "NSA or FISA. Government." He turns to look up at Finch. "But you're not government."

"No, I'm not." He in fact could not be further away. Finch limps over to the chair. He's breathing hard, unable to fully steady himself, still full of adrenaline and in no small amount of pain from being crushed against a wall by his broken neck. He is weary as he speaks. "I guess you could call me... a concerned third party."

"You couldn't have saved this woman." Reese looks up as Finch implores him. "Or your friend. But you could have if you had known in _time_." He speaks ever faster, with all of his heart's hope and intensity imbuing the words. "And that's the other thing I'm offering you: a chance to _be there in time_."

Reese just stares, only able to breathe. Finch takes a picture out of the inside pocket of his coat.

"It's not too late for her. You could help me stop what's about to happen. The question is, _will you_?" And that is the crux of it. Finch was serious when he said they could help each other. He can't do this alone, he's frail and weak, but no one on Earth is armed with more knowledge. If Reese will let Finch help him, Harold can finally help all the others he's been trapped watching suffer. His voice breaks on the word "question". If the answer is no, they are both doomed, along with untold thousands of others.

Not long after, John and Finch are walking together. John has chosen life over a gradual death. Others' lives, not his own, but life nonetheless. They're in some derelict space between buildings, dark and old and brick. 

"What is this place?"

"The decline of western civilization. The city closed half its libraries. Budget cuts," Finch says with disgust. "The building was sold to a bank that I control, which promptly declared bankruptcy. So the property's in a kind of limbo. It doesn't exist." 

They walk, with Finch limping heavily, through a metal gate to find an old dusty library, books literally everywhere, scattered on the floor, on the stairs, strewn about. They have to stride through them, which seems problematic since Finch doesn't have the greatest footing. Does he do this every time he comes in? But it's okay, we'll see little to nothing of this room again.

"Neither do you. I did a little digging."

Finch struggles up the stairs but conspicuously does not hold the rail. He has to be seen as injured, he can't avoid that, but strives to be seen as independent, not needing help or sympathy in this regard or any other. (He'll get it anyway.) It takes energy and labor, but he can do it.

"I recognize, Mr. Reese, that there's a disparity between how much I know about you and how much you know about me. I know you'll be trying to close that gap as quickly as possible." He chuckles a little at that point of truth, imagining the futility of what John is about to attempt. "But I should tell you," and he stops on the stairs, breathing hard, to turn to Reese for emphasis. "I'm a really private person."

John can't help but be kind of amused by this. Finch may be a rich lunatic, but he's a dryly funny lunatic, clever and bold.

Up at a desk, Finch has everything John will need, already ready. He spreads them out in disbelief. This is incredible what this man has done, how much effort and time it must have taken. And all of it is for Reese. 

"Drivers licenses..." Reese is already in that pile. "Credit cards..." Presented in a rubber banded stack. There must be at least 20. "Six cover identities." Finch puts the passports down in a fan. "Funds to be replenished by a proxy corporation. Just like when you were with the agency." Reese can't believe all of this. How did he do this? Why?

And John looks up. The wall catches his eye. He talks as he walks forward. Finch is out of his coat, down to his vest and shirtsleeves. Reese is wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket. He isn't fully himself yet.

"When I was with the agency, I knew who was picking up the tab." 

Finally he reaches the back wall and sees the list in all its terrible perfection. Numbers attached to faces, news clippings, notes, ends. So many ends. Finch leans on the desk to gauge his reaction. 

"This is your list? _The_ list?"

"Yup." There's nothing else to say. The list will speak for him.

"But you don't get names, do you? These are Social Security numbers. And each of them map out to a violent crime." John is astonished. Finch moves beside him, can do nothing but nod. "And all of these numbers represent..."

"Lost chances." Finch cannot bear any more lost chances.

"I could be a lot more help to you if you just tell me where you're getting these numbers." John laughs a bit. This is all so crazy.

Finch, of course, is having none of that. "It doesn't really matter where I get the numbers." He's right, at least for a little while. "What you need to know is the next number that's up is hers."

They go out to tail their first number together. It's raining in New York. They walk and discuss her case. She's a lawyer, an assistant district attorney. 

"We have no idea when this bad thing might happen, huh?"

"Could be in a week. Could be five minutes. That's why we need to learn as much as we can about her. How do you intend to begin?"

"The slow way? Cultivate a relationship to allow you to earn the asset's trust."

"And the fast way?"

And Reese is on his first mission, being as invasive in this woman's life as possible without her knowing. He's looking more and more like himself in every scene. The leather jacket gets switched out for a cleaner black coat, although still over a dark green t-shirt. His hair is slicked back more, almost fully groomed. His hand is bandaged from the cuts he got getting himself out of the ziptie.

And they have their first counsel in Finch's office, pointing at the broken glass board of clips and photos.

Reese is wearing a cartoonishly huge black bluetooth in his ear. He'll upgrade soon.

In Diane Hansen's court, who's testifying but our future pal Fusco, yet in dirty cop mode. But he lets something slip about her current prosecution's girlfriend, and makes things more complicated as he so often does.

"What's it matter? We got the guy." Fusco at this point is all for convicting anyone for this or pretty much anything else. He'll grow a lot in the years to come.

Hansen walks by Reese and he's as obviously faking not watching her as is physically possible. He gets much better at this, but he's still currently a hardcore alcoholic, to be fair.

Finch is at his desk giving intel for the first time. This is what he can do, and it is a powerful, effective thing.

In jail, the guy on trial is clearly covering for his brother who was at the crime scene. "These people are evil." Finch is listening, that stops him in his place. This is it.

The man jumps the lawyer, choking her at the bars. Listening on a flip phone outside, Reese flicks out his nightstick. He's outside the entire jail. He can't help anyone from there. And neither can Finch, looking on hopelessly from his office, seeing this in his mind reconstructed from sound. 

When she says she's fine, they're both incredibly relieved. Reese paces a little at the fence, calming himself and the man on the other end of the line. "Okay. She's okay. She's okay." Finch drops himself in his chair, relieved but his heart is still pounding.

The Machine goes back to a recording of Jessica talking to her mom in 2001. "I'm just down in Mexico with Cindy..." Below her, John laughs. "And I'll... be back tomorrow." This is that one perfect moment they had together. He's lying back on the blankets, reaching up to touch her, anywhere, everywhere.

"Cindy. I look like a Cindy?"

They're kissing, giggling and wrestling, in love and happy. "I didn't tell her about us yet." 

"It's been six months." At least they had that. It's not nothing, and they had this perfect moment to take with them.

She touches his cheek. "I wish this weekend could go on forever."

He brushes her hair away from her face. "It already has. It's Tuesday."

"Yes, which means you have to go back to the base, and I'm not gonna see you again for two weeks, which I hate."

His service jacket is on a chair. Special Forces airborne.

"Then ask me to stay, and I will." Oh, god. She'll use these words back to him one day and that moment will stick with him too, a wound that never closes. "I'll quit. I'll quit."

"Okay. Then quit."

"I already did."

"What?" Now she sits up.

"Yeah. I didn't want to take the chance that you wouldn't be here when I got back." 

They kiss and laugh, together in one perfect moment.

"But first, we need some more tequila."

And that's it, the end of everything. He rolls away to call for more booze, and she clicks on the television. In Spanish, the newscaster is talking fast. And he mentions a location in English. It's the only place it can be. This is that day.

"Jess, what's wrong?"

"Uh... It's New York. I don't know. I don't know. Something's happened this morning."

Reese sits up, now watching himself. 

"Is it a plane crash?"

"I think it's two. I think it's two planes." God, there's so much in just that realization. The one we all made, the one we all watched. One may be an accident. Two is intentional.

And the bottom falls out of Reese's stomach too. All Americans remember that moment of understanding and horror well. This was a singularity. Nothing was ever or will ever be the same since.

In the present, Reese and Finch are surveilling their target.

"We'd better get to this kid before someone else does."

Every scene, John comes a little more back into his powers and a little closer to himself. He's got a blue suitcoat now, blue dress shirt. It's not far from his proper look.

He spooks the kid as he is fairly terrible at everything in this first case as he gets his feet back under him. There's a foot chase. He catches up to the kid, but his "you need to come with me" routine after terrifying this kid and chasing him down is clearly not going to work. Kid yells at some nearby construction workers to help him, that Reese is trying to put him in a taxi with him for... other reasons. John's going to have to defuse this situation, so he slips a burner phone in the kid's bag and lets him go.

At the library, Reese is realizing he's underpowered as is. He sits at the computer to look something up.

"I'm gonna need a hell of a lot more than a cellphone."

"About that. I don't like firearms very much." Do we ever learn why Finch hates guns so much? Another of his mysteries.

"Well, neither do I, but if someone has to have them, I'd rather it was me. Besides, my friend from the subway has a line on some. Lightly used. Steep discount." On the monitor is Anton's mugshot, looking not quite as smug as the last time we saw him.

And here is Anton again in the flesh. He and his crew roll up to a bodega in an SUV, speakers blasting. In the back of the store, it's a gun deal. Quite a selection lies out on the table in the middle of the room. And it's excellent character actor, William Sadler as Anton's dad. He's had it with these worthless kids.

"Pop, what about this one?"

"Are you planning on buying that one?"

"I was just showing it to–"

"Put it back on the table, before somebody else kicks your ass." He's laughing, but then John walks in asking about the men's room.

He's so close to himself here. Dark jacket over blue open collar dress shirt. Beneath we can see a regular black tee, not like the little white v necks he'll wear later. He's got his hair slick and parted.

"Hey, Anton! Good to see you again!"

"You know this guy?" They shake their heads. They can't recognize Reese all cleaned up. He looks down at the buffet of death on the table.

"Wow, that's some pretty serious equipment. Have you guys taken a safety course?"

He steps forward and basically the entire room pulls on him. He puts his hands up, but is still relaxed.

"Take you, for instance." The guy beside him is trying to look tough, pointing his gun at John's chest. "You're holding that thing sideways. You can't aim it, and two, it'll eject a shell casing right into your face. See?"

And he's upon them. Tough guy does indeed get a shell casing to the face. Everyone else in the room gets shot by his gun while he's still holding it as Reese has him in his grasp and control. The wounds are in legs, nonlethal. Anton's dad is scrambling for a gun on the table, but it's too late. He loses a kneecap too. Tough guy gets thrown back and summarily shot as well. That leaves Anton standing, his hands up, stunned.

Reese tucks his gun away and grabs a bag to take what he came for. There's a good selection, and he takes what he thinks will be useful.

"I'm gonna hold onto these while you guys get some more practice. Have a nice day." And he just walks out.

"Who the hell was that?" Anton's dad asks from the floor. Don't worry. The Man in the Suit will get his new name soon.

Outside, Finch has news. The kid they've been looking for has been caught and is being driven away. They listen in from his phone.

"You've gotta do something..." Finch begs him.

Reese is in the cab trying to corner the car. As he approaches, he readies a long gun and hands cash to the cabbie. He's not even really trying to hide it. What does this taxi driver do now?

"Keep the change," John says. The taxi tires squeal, he can't get away fast enough. John pulls down a balaclava over his face and strides forward to go to work. He tosses the bag down, lifts the grenade launcher. All you can see of him are his eyes, fierce and determined.

Ah, smoke grenade through the windshield. The SUV crashes nearby. First guy who gets out gets shot, the next punched the fuck to the ground. Finally John has who he was looking for. He drags the kid away.

"You're crazy! We're both dead now. Do you know who they are?"

He looks down at the wallet off guy #2 that he stole. "I do now." It's a police badge.

Next day, it's a dirty cop convention in the parking lot of a truck stop. Our boy Fusco is there.

Reese is realizing how in deep he is now.

"What exactly have you gotten me into?"

"I don't know. That's the whole point. I hired you to help me figure that out." They're walking in the park. It's winter, the trees are bare. Finch is Finch, same as ever. Reese is in all black. He hands Finch a set of photos.

"Here. I think we're up against a group of corrupt cops." And they will be for a long time coming. "Stills is Narcotics. Him and his men get word of deals, they steal the drugs, the cash, and they kill all the witnesses."

Finch flips to a picture of Lionel with his mouth open, as ever. "And they get Fusco to frame up guys like Lawrence Pope for the murders."

"Exactly. I think their next target is Hansen. But I don't know for certain. Hell, I don't know anything for certain because you won't _tell me where you're getting your information_." Reese is losing his cool. He's tired of being left in the dark on something so dire and important.

Finch looks into the distance and makes a decision. The memories are shadows behind his eyes. He looks away into those memories, delving deep to explain.

"When the towers came down, you were in a hotel in Mexico. I was here. I was working. Didn't even know about the attacks until that evening. You see, Mr. Reese, until that day, I had spent the better part of my life making myself very rich. Suddenly all that money didn't seem to amount to much." Reese's jaw tenses. He remembers like all Americans how everything didn't seem to amount to much. They start walking through Central Park.

"After the attacks, the government gave itself the power to read every email, listen to every cell phone, but they needed something that could sort through it all, something that could pick the terrorists out of the general population before they could act. The public wanted to be protected, they just didn't want to know _how_ they were being protected. So when they finally got a system that worked, they kept it secret."

"So how do you know about it?"

He stops and turns to Reese. "I built it." John is stunned but just Finch walks on and continues.

"But there was a problem with this... _machine_. I had built it to prevent the next 9/11." They're walking through shadow, fully silhouetted in a tunnel. Shouting, running schoolchildren hurry past them the other way. "But it was seeing all sorts of crimes. So I had to teach the machine to divide the things it saw into two lists: relevant and irrelevant." They come into the light as Reese does, now understanding what's really happening here. "Events that would cause massive loss of life were relevant, so those would be passed along to the NSA or the FBI."

"And the irrelevant information?" We see them from above, as the Machine does. 

Finch stops again, takes a breath. "Every night at midnight the machine... erases it."

They're out in the open now both with their hands in their pockets, New York in its glory around them. "It was only later that I realized my mistake. That irrelevant list was eating away at me."

"So where's the machine now?"

"What, the drives? Who knows? Government facility somewhere. But the Machine?" and here he moves to talk about the Machine as an entity unto itself. "The Machine is everywhere."

They stop and Finch turns around, inviting Reese to look and consider their surroundings.

"Watching us with ten thousand eyes. Listening with a million ears."

It's the Machine's perspective of their conversation. It has to correct its transcription of Finch's words on the fly by context. 'Years' becomes 'ears'. Every other conversation, pointless and otherwise, is similarly being catalogued and kept.

"You gave yourself a way to communicate with it?"

"I was building the government a tool of unimaginable power. I thought maybe an off switch would come in handy. So I built myself a back door into it." Finch is lying to Reese here as he tells the truth about everything else. The irrelevant list and the access to it are all due to Nathan, who Finch simply absorbs into himself here. In a way, they were then too.

Reese is onto it and finds it brilliant. "To access the irrelevant list."

"Just a Social Security number. If anyone ever found out I'd lose access so... nine digits, that's all we get."

Reese realizes this is why Finch has nothing to give him on their current case. All he has is her number. It's all he ever has. Everything else has to come from them.

"And we have no idea why it picked Diane Hansen."

"It wouldn't be steering us toward her if it wasn't seeing something."

"I don't know if I can protect Hansen. I can't see the whole picture."

Finch nods. _Yes, now you're getting it._

"I offered you a job, Mr. Reese. I never said it would be easy." He leaves Reese there in the park to think about what he knows now and what he will do next with the weight of that knowledge. 

At the station, Officer Exposition is taking a guy out and he runs into Carter.

"You hear about your pal Anton? Him and his father tried to buy some guns, wound up getting shot with their own merchandise."

"Are they dead?" 

"Nope. Embarrassed enough. They got taken out by one guy. In a suit." And voila, a legend is born.

Carter looks suspicious. _One guy._ It's got to be him.

At the jail, Lawrence Pope, the man on trial and being framed, gets shivved in his cell overnight. Finch breaks the news to Reese. That's one life lost already. They have to make sure it's not two.

Reese jacks a car to go to the meetup their number Hansen made with an anonymous voice on the phone. John is packing serious weaponry, something like an M16. He's ready to fight to protect her and she looks small and vulnerable in the grimy, empty alleyway as she calls for whoever it is she's about to meet. 

"Are you here? Hello?"

And at the far end of the alley, who is coming up to meet her but the bad cop squad. John raises his gun to target them.

Oops, she's in on it. She's just annoyed they made her wait. Reese lowers the gun, shocked. He tries backing out of the situation, but oops again, it's Fusco, grabbing him by the collar. His eyes are just visible over his arm with the gun to Reese's head. He's determined too. John swears internal obscenities as he puts his hands up. The gash in the soft part of his palm by his thumb is red and still healing, now unbandaged. 

"Hey, look what I found. We got ourselves a groupie. Heavily armed too." He shoves John down to his knees after leading him out of where he was hiding. Fusco's super New York accent makes him a little cartoonish, but he'll be reliable comic relief to keep things from getting too bleak later.

"You're not law enforcement. Cartel finally grow some stones? Who the hell are you?"

"Concerned... third party?" Reese chuckles, bringing Finch's words back. He's not giving up yet. Stills punches him in the face and then after getting threatened by Hansen, knocks him clean out.

John wakes up with a bruise on his face in the back of a police car. Outside is Jersey or something. Nowhere. Swamp. Fusco's driving.

"Nice spot."

"It's Oyster Bay. Glad you like it. You're gonna be here a long, long time." Fusco does not like this part of his job, summary execution, but he's still willing to do it. His teeth are crooked as he is but also like him, with a little care they could be fixed. 

John is smiling in the back seat, amused.

"I'm curious. Was there a point where you knew you'd become a bad guy?"

Fusco answers him in a reasoning that drives much of what happens in the early seasons of this show and the entire world in the 2010s.

"Woke up one morning, realized I was paid to guard a buncha jerks on Wall Street who were robbing everybody blind." Yep, pretty much, Lionel. "They're stealin' more than my annual salary in an afternoon. So I said, what the hell?"

"I don't believe you." Like Finch read his true intentions clearly, so does Reese here with Fusco. "See, I've been watching you, Lionel." Fusco squints into the rear view mirror. "Your heart's not really into it." Reese cares very much about the intent of people's hearts. 

"Now Stills, he does it for money, but I think you do it because you're loyal." And someday soon, when they save his soul, he will be loyal to Carter and Reese and Finch. 

"What's the difference?"

"It's why I'm gonna let you live."

Fusco finds that hilarious. They share a laugh, a would-be murderer and his target. Reese's eyes sparkle. He has that million dollar smile. 

"Yeah, I'm considering sticking around New York for a while. If I do, I'm gonna need someone on the inside and you might come in handy." Another chance in this episode to see Reese's eyes from behind reinforced wire, just peeking through.

"Ah, so I'm workin' for you now, huh?"

"That's right." More chuckling from Fusco, but Reese is getting down to business. "But I've got two rules. One, you so much as hurt _anybody_ , and I'll kill ya. I don't particularly like killing people, but I'm very good at it." Poor Reese. In another life somewhere, he didn't have to suffer like this.

"And two... you have to be more careful. For instance, if you're gonna put someone in the back seat of your car, you have to search them properly." And he holds up his trump card, a conveniently pocketed flash bang grenade. 

The pin comes out with a metal sting and the grenade hits the floor to pop. Fusco can't keep control of the car and it swerves all over the road until he hits a curb and the car goes flying. It rolls over and skids to a stop on its hood. Somehow neither of them are dead or even really very much injured. Reese kicks out the rear glass and slithers out, still handcuffed. 

Fusco's weak when John drags him from the remains of the car. He's not getting up very soon. He can't move much as John searches him, removing his gun and taking his cuff keys.

"No, please," Fusco begs him. "What are you doin'?" He's not killing you, just like he said.

Finally free from the cuffs, Reese takes Fusco's gun and drags him to his feet to face the car. "You have your vest on, Officer?" Reese asks behind him. They're both banged up, breathing hard. John's hair is everywhere. 

And Fusco finally gets what's about to happen. "Yeah."

John shoves him forward to get some space and shoots him four times in the back. Fusco falls face first to the ground gasping. Ouch. And Reese just walks away down the empty road.

At the library, Finch is alone, fiddling in an old card catalog, keeping his nervous hands busy. The phone chirps and he rushes to answer it. 

"Where the _hell_ have you–"

"There's no time. We were wrong. Hansen isn't the target, she's the ringleader." It's important in this early experience for John to learn that the Machine doesn't just give victims' numbers. It often does, but you can never assume anything.

Reese hotwires a car. Finch sits down, concerned. This changes everything, and it's incredibly dangerous. This woman has a lot of power and ability to hurt people. On his screen is her next target, a man named Wheeler, caught in a casual shot with red eye, probably pulled from social media (that Finch invented).

Stills and crew are setting up some poor guy they've kidnapped to use as a patsy for their next murder. They agree to kill him too as they drag him scared out of the trunk.

They set up in a hallway, and hit the lights. Out comes their man. But his son's with him in his kiddie baseball gear. Crew balks for a minute, but Stills is ready to off the kid too.

"What a waste." He readies the terrified man in his grasp. "You're about to kill a man. _And_ his son."

But look who's here. Reese comes up behind guy #1 and covers his mouth, keeping his gun to his skull. "Drop your weapon," John whispers. Of course he does it. All the while, Reese keeps focused on his real enemy, Stills, ahead with his patsy.

They see each other. Reese shakes his head. _Give it up, man._ But Stills doesn't care about anyone's life, so he just puts the gun up to his hostage's head. They both retreat to wait because the elevator with the target and his son is about to arrive with a ding.

The little boy drops his ball on the way out and Reese stops it with his booted foot. The kid looks up at him and Reese smiles a little to reassure him and get rid of him, and he makes sure to keep his hostage just out of sight. Son and dad walk out safely, and now we're back to the standoff. Two sets of gunmen and hostages step forward.

"Let him go." Reese pleads with his eyes. He doesn't want to kill, he doesn't want anyone to die.

"I can't do that." Stills doesn't have any of John's ethics or qualms. "I let him go, my friends and I go to jail."

The crony from upstairs pops out from the stairwell and John promptly shoots his kneecap off. He whispers to his hostage. "Drag your friend outside and take him to the hospital. Right... now." John's voice isn't strong here, it's wavering. He knows that in the next few seconds, he is going to have to take yet another life. He will kill a man tonight. Death is approaching, death at his hands. It hurts him to his soul. 

The man dashes away to his shot crewmate and John pulls his gun on Stills, who is just visible by his eyes behind his terrified hostage.

"I think I kill you and your friend here. Make it look like you killed each other." John's wrists are bruised from the handcuffs earlier. The man takes a beating. "Then, just because you pissed me off... I'm gonna kill your family." Stills grins evilly. "And all your friends."

"I don't have any friends. I don't have any family left either." John's voice is small and lost here. He feels he is utterly alone and it is true, he was. But he is not anymore, even if he doesn't realize it yet. "Went around the world looking for bad guys. But there were plenty of you right here all along."

They squint at each other, then we move outside for the gunfire. Two quick shots, bursts of light through the doorway glass. Stills' hostage runs out and away, unharmed. 

Later, Hansen is in court and is immediately busted when she tries to play a 911 call as evidence but only gets a recording of her own voice setting up a murder.

And there John is at the door, smirking at her. _Hi._

Fusco makes it back to his car, although he's got a bit of a mild limp now. Pretty good coming off a major car crash plus four shots to the back of the vest. He groans as he gets in. He's about to groan a lot more.

Surprise! John pops up in the backseat and puts Fusco's own gun to his head.

"You ready to get to work, Officer?"

"I'm no good to you. I'm dead. Just a matter of time before the gangs get me. Or I.A."

"No one knows you're involved. I took care of that. Besides, they'll be too busy lookin' for Stills. The police will think he's run for it. The gangs and the mob will think he's gone witness protection."

"Is that where he is, witness protection?" Wishful thinking.

"No, Lionel. He's in the trunk." Fusco knows he's screwed. "Only problem is... uh... um... I had to shoot him with your gun and you'd have a hard time explaining that one, so..." Reese chuckles. "You'll be taking another trip. And I'm not comin' along this time."

"Where am I going?" Where do you think?

"Oyster Bay." How many people has Fusco put in Oyster Bay? "Where no one's gonna find him for a long, long time. I'll be in touch." John's blue eyes flash in a shaft of light. He's grinning. And Fusco can do nothing but start the car and his long drive.

At the spot where they met, Finch is waiting for Reese again with his back turned. This time, he's sitting at the bench, still watching the water and the city in the gray overcast light of winter. He turns up to see John approach. Reese has had a rough ride in these last couple of days. His face bears a number of red abrasions.

"You have a decision to make."

"The machine gave you another number."

"The numbers _never_ stop coming. You should know that upfront." And god, he would know.

"Why me?" Wiring, John. Innate programming.

"I've been watching you for a _long_ time, John. We have more in common than you might think." He's ten thousand times right about that, more so than he even understands yet. "The world thinks we're both _dead_ , for starters." He gives Reese the smallest of smiles. It's his black humor, always drenched in truth. 

"You programmed the machine to delete those irrelevant numbers. Now you're trying to save them." John sits close. Finch watches him, mouth pulled tight. "What changed your mind?"

Harold gazes into the distance, into memory. "Let's just say you're not the only one that's _lost_ someone." Reese closes his eyes. Another thing they share. Grief, pain, guilt.

"If you want to leave, I'll give you enough money to get you as far as you need." Finch looks back at him, trying to read his intentions. "Disappear."

John is considering. "And if I stay?"

"Sooner or later, both of us will probably wind up dead." Finch has been prepared for that inevitability for a long time, but he needs John to understand that's their future. There really is no way out of this. John takes a breath. "Actually dead, this time." Again, grim but a little dryly funny. "I said I'd tell you the truth. I didn't say you'd like it."

But of course, John has nothing else to live for. Helping would be better than drinking until he passes out and hoping he doesn't wake up this time. He nods gently, his decision made.

Later, Carter's busting one of the crooked cops. She hates these guys but she has questions.

"I wanna know about _him_. The guy who came after you."

"I don't know anything. It was just some guy alone, in a suit." So Batman, more or less.

"Yeah, well, you're gonna tell me everything you _don't_ know about him, and where I can find him."

But of course, Reese is watching this whole thing play out from about 20 feet away. He walks away in his long dark winter coat, still bruised and battered. Good thing he's such a quick healer. 

He stops and looks up at his real new employer. A security camera like the thousands upon thousands everywhere looks down on him. The red light comes on.

_I see you._

Instinctively, he knows it's thinking about him, communicating in its way. This is the beginning of their partnership too.

* * *

#### Thoughts

  * John is our everyman viewpoint in this episode, watching Finch as a madman: wealthy, seemingly delusional, mysterious. He stays mysterious forever. Harold gives of himself freely, but not by opening himself up. He connects with others with near endless empathy and compassion, but rejects it wholly for himself. He knows that others need people, and will come to know they need him in particular as a man with such decency that it spreads out to those around him and imbues them with it too. Even and especially the Machine becomes a better, more loving person for knowing and being guided by him. But he sees himself as different, separate. And he has made such devastating mistakes. His choices killed Nathan and broke Grace's heart, the only two people who ever even came close to truly knowing him. His guilt for them is bottomless. He protects his secrets out of intense privacy and that privacy is based in both real fear and continuous shame. He feels he doesn't deserve to need anyone anymore, if he ever did. When he does need people, it is embarrassing for him, a personal failure. But he would never expect that of others. His standard for himself is impossible, but he never stops trying.
  * Finch calls Jessica "your friend", making her equivalent to Nathan, equal in their terrible and hollowing loss. In John's words, when you lose the person who connects you to the world, who do you become then? John and Jessica, Harold and Nathan and Grace. They both lost their dearest friends and the loves of their lives simultaneously in a single devastating moment.
  * Harold and John will come to be each other's connection to the world even though they both believed that kind of human love and care was lost to them forever.
  * It never stops being agonizing that Finch's greatest achievement, this glorious compassion machine driven to save lives and prevent tragedy, got everyone who knew about it killed. Like Reese, his best and worst of his life are forever entwined.




	3. POI 1x02 - Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese and Finch begin learning to trust their budding partnership and each other and Carter begins learning that although the Man in the Suit is not on the same side of the law as she is, he is on the same side of good.

### POI 1x02 - Ghosts

#### Landmarks

  * Carter sees for the first time the real good John does
  * John saves Finch's life for the first time
  * Finch quits his 17 year day job at IFT doing database coding after John finds him there



#### Injuries

  * **Reese**
    * Slashed in the hand with a box cutter
    * Thrown through a plate glass window
    * Smashes a truck he's driving into another car



At an elevator, John just barely makes it in time or exactly on time to slide between the closing doors. 

And if we were running at about 50% of John's powers before, he's back to 100% now and you can see it because the man is dressed to the nines. The black suit and white unbuttoned shirt have arrived, and they are delicious. There is something tantalizing about the glimpses of skin, enticing us to see more, learn more, as we would like to see more and learn more of John as a person. 

He's clearly doing well in his new job and they're cranking through numbers. This one is simple, just keeping a philanderer alive in an elevator. There's real pleasure in John, a focus and enjoyment. This is what he's good at, violence, but he finally gets to use it for good as he always wanted. He was tricked into the moral black hole out of a desire to help people, to protect them. The government lied. Finch never will.

Reese is deadpan the whole elevator ride talking this guy through exactly what is happening to him at this very moment. He's open to the number and the hitmen standing behind them. _I know you're here._ Where in his old job he knew next to nothing about what he was being ordered to do, now he has information to use as a tool and a weapon.

If John had just not showboated here, he could have done this job with much less hassle and maybe no gunfire at all, but what fun would that be? He cultivates this reputation. The Man in the Suit: fearless, brutal, well-dressed.

"I would call the police, and a good divorce lawyer." What would you tell the police about this strange man who just saved your life by shooting two people in an elevator with you there? Of course, here it doesn't matter if it wouldn't be believed, because Carter already believes it. She's met him. 

So the cases are going well, but Reese is desperate to know exactly who this man is he's working for. But he'll never find out following him out on the street like this. 

He's stalking up, with sunglasses on as if that was going to help him be sneaky with Finch. As he finds out, Finch is more than a formidable opponent. His secrets tend to stay that way.

He calls and Harold answers. 

"Yes?"

"Good morning, Finch. No problems last night. Two hitmen were waiting to kill a guy just like you said they'd be." John is impressed that this is real. This Batman's Bruce Wayne isn't a playboy, but he is a billionaire funding a vigilante just the same. "I took care of it."

"Good. You should get some rest."

"Thought I'd do a little research." He's basically telling him he's following him. That open hand trick might work with idiot criminals, but it's never going to work with Finch. He doesn't even need the clue anyway – he already knew what John was trying.

"I'll be interested to hear what you discover." _Come try it. I can't wait to hear all about how it went for you._ "We need to meet later."

"Your machine kick out another number? Somebody else is going to be involved in a crime?" Maybe we're much earlier than Reese's ease at the job led me to believe. These may be just the first few numbers. 

"This one is somewhat... unusual." Finch just turned the corner and Reese hops to it to follow. "I'll let you know where to go." John rounds the corner. There's no one there. "And, Mr. Reese? We'll meet on _my_ schedule. Not yours." Finch commands respect. He is John's boss and especially in the beginning, he pushes that. It takes time for John to earn his trust and move closer to a true partnership, let alone any kind of friendship.

Back at the elevator, Carter's storming up. Everybody's surprised she's there because she's Homicide and nobody's dead, but she's gotten a whiff of the Man in the Suit. 

"...and this other gentleman, quote, "intervened", unquote."

"Let me guess. Some guy in a suit." Carter is angry. This guy is violent and he is everywhere now. And she had her hands on him once.

At their outdoor meeting, Finch is taunting Reese.

"How did your research go?"

"Inconclusive." Yeah, get used to that analysis. He's already frustrated and there's a lot more where that came from.

"The number we've received is for a girl named Theresa Whitaker, 15 years old." Finch puts weight on the last point. It hurts him that this poor girl was only a child. There's such regret in his voice. He feels everything so much. "Some disciplinary trouble, but basically a good kid." 

"Well, the machine did spit out her number so she must be caught up in something. Where can I find her?"

Finch turns himself stiffly to look up at Reese. No one ever talks about Finch's disability. He's certainly never going to talk about it and he'll never ask for help about it either.

"As I told you, Mr. Reese, this situation is somewhat unique." He's always somewhat out of breath when he's walking in the early days. He'll heal more with time, his bones and his ability to relax and trust a little. "You see, Theresa Whitaker should be right here."

Reese takes off his sunglasses dramatically. It's a gravestone, marking the whole family. It's crushing to Finch.

"She was murdered, along with the rest of her family. Two years ago." Reese doesn't know what to make of this. Weird just keeps getting weirder.

"So we're looking for a ghost?"

We see some of the Machine's servers. It's better to understand the Machine as not a physical presence. She's distributed, in the cloud, everywhere. There is no one set of servers to show. It would be thousands and thousands in as many places.

We go back to 2002. Finally we're going to learn a little about Finch. And the first person we see is the one who matters the most. None of this would have ever happened without Nathan. He's walking into the IFT building.

And you know we're in the past because Finch is running. He's on a treadmill, working hard. We hear his footfalls and heavy breaths as Nathan walks up. We see a few racks of servers around this empty warehouse part of the building Finch works out of. This is the beginning. This is where he's building her.

"Ah, I thought you might still be here." Nathan always has his swagger about him. It was his whole reason for being in their partnership. Harold was always the backend work. Nathan was front end in the most important way. Tonight, he's just come back from some awards ceremony. He's got booze in his hand along with a glass trophy. He's in a tux, but he's untied the bowtie and loosened the collar. His hair is coiffed. 

"I come bearing gifts. Whiskey..." Harold grunts approvingly, still too out of breath for full words. "And we won another award." He holds up whatever engraved glass shard nonsense they gave him. Harold has enough breath for a laugh.

"Look, I know our deal. I schmooze the board, I cash out the checks, I pick up the awards, you do most of the work. But, honestly, this is getting exhausting for me." He probably is exhausted. Nathan ran himself down doing all the schmoozing. The whiskey isn't just a gift. It's also a cage.

"I'm perfectly happy with the division of labor, always have been." Nathan was Harold's public face. He could accomplish anything with someone else doing the talking, someone with finesse and charm. Without Nathan, Harold is without a face at all. He has no UI.

Toweling off, Harold leans over, curious now about the shiny block now sitting on his desk. "What's this one for?"

"This..." He picks it up. "Is for services to humanity." Harold will deserve it someday, honestly and truly. But not yet. "I didn't tell them that we laid off half the staff in order to build this Orwellian nightmare."

"You said you wanted to make a difference... give something back." Harold almost sounds like he felt coerced into this. Either way, they're doing this now, so there is only forward for both of them. They have to work like hell to make it so it can't be used for evil.

Nathan looks at a million multicolored wires running up the side of a server block. 

"Is this the government feeds?"

Harold sniffs and nods. "Direct from NSA at Fort Meade. That's every email, every phone call, surveillance cameras..." Nathan looks at him astonished and fairly horrified. What they're building is unfathomably powerful... and dangerous.

"In the country?"

A smile. "No, that's just New York." He punches some buttons. "I'm starting with the basics here. I'm trying to teach it to track people using cell phone location data, facial recognition. I'm almost ready to move onto the next problem."

"What's the next problem?"

"Sorting them all out. Terrorists don't exactly stand out on street corners, you know. You have to teach the machine to sift through the emails, wire-tapped phones, bank transactions... looking for people that are _hiding_ something, _living double lives_." Oh, Harold. Everyone is hiding something. Everyone is living a double life. You have all your past. Nathan has all his women. No one is ever fully out in the open.

"People like you, in other words." Nathan's right on it. He points with the finger holding his glass of whiskey and laughs. Harold is less impressed, but can't really deny it. "How long will this take?"

"Four, five more years."

Nathan saunters up to a screen while Harold works. There's a map, untold little black dots all over it.

"So this is..."

"Everyone." Harold is proud, smiles. Nathan can't help being scared. He's much more aware of how risky this device they're building can be. Harold sees only the shield he believes he's making. Nathan can see the sword.

The map zooms in. The black dots are squares and triangles, moving around, shifting in place. Eight million lives, going about their day, unaware.

In the present, stiff, sadder Finch in his rectangle glasses stands at the edge of a small pier. Reese walks up. He's dressed in all black, looks more sinister than he will later. He's wearing his suspicion.

"Nice spot."

Finch hands him a manila envelope.

"This is the last place Theresa Whitaker was seen alive." We move behind them. There's an airport control tower in the distance, a marina up close full of fishing and pleasure boats. They are next to a conspicuous large yellow box labeled _life ring_. They are rescuers too. "Two years ago, her father Grant takes the family for a weekend sail. No one comes home."

Like so many of their cases, this family was the wreckage of the financial crash. The dad, a real estate developer, was upside down on 14 properties, according to Finch. The police report says he killed his family, then himself. Grim, and Finch feels all of it.

Ah, but now we get to it – the girl's body was never recovered.

"The police only see what they choose to look for. The Machine sees almost everything." Finch is sure. "If the girl's number has come up, she must be alive." 

Reese is skeptical, unsure of why she'd be missing for so long.

"I don't know, but if the machine is right and she's still alive, she won't be for long." He gives John all of the pressuring side eye. _This is why I hired you._ "Better find her."

John's gonna need some police info, so now he needs to start working with Fusco. Lionel is all nervous and sweaty looking at the station.

And he should be because John just grabs him out of a hallway and drags him bodily into a bathroom to shove him against a wall. He keeps his hand on his chest, pressing his back into the white tile.

"Hello, Lionel."

" _You. Again._ How the hell'd you get in here?"

John holds up his new fancy detective badge inside his coat. "Took it off your friend Stills."

Fusco's mad. IAB's been giving him hassle. "They think I'm dirty."

"That's because you are dirty, Lionel. Look, your predicament is not my doing or my concern."

At the library, they're watching archive footage. The family is crying on local news, they never thought the father could do something like this.

"That's because they didn't," Reese says. This is starting to weigh on him too. He has his head down on his hand. "This was a professional hit."

"And you know that how?"

"That's how I would have done it." Finch tries not to think too deeply about that one. Has John killed families? Children? Harold knows. We don't.

"We don't know how much time Theresa has left," Reese says. "Might need a little help, Finch."

So Harold goes on his first solo mission. Off to pretend to be an insurance type, which he's so very good at. His pseudonym today is Arthur Bellinger, Liberty State Mutual. Everyone's eyes glaze over instantly at that introduction, exactly as he wants it.

The aunt he's gone to see is sweet and sad. "Does this mean they're going to stop searching for Theresa?" she asks. Finch looks up at that. "Her body, I mean." She's still so upset and he is sympathetic, understanding.

"Unfortunately, you can't pick your parents," she says. Finch feels that one.

Meanwhile, Carter's up to her ears in cases connected to the Man in the Suit, but half of them have been redacted.

"Feds," says the guy who brings her yet another empty file. "This one's above your pay grade, Carter." She doesn't care about that. She goes where justice lies, wherever that may be. 

Reese has just finally found the skate punk former boyfriend of the missing girl. "$200 fine to skate in the park." He hassles him in fake detective mode to get his hands on the guy's phone for a minute. Then he asks about the girl and waits for his cell phone cloning to do its work. It doesn't take long.

She's over by an ATM, wearing a hoodie. John tries to chase her, which only scares her more. He's really got to stop just running after kids, this never works. When he does manage to grab her arm for a second, she slashes him with a box cutter and runs away.

Finch is walking slowly to work. He goes into an office full of cubicles with his briefcase. The office ladies seem to like him. His young Lumberg type boss doesn't. He tells him he needs the database Harold's coding "a little faster, okay?" The idiot looks Finch up and down, judging him as a decrepit old man. "You... You gotta keep up." It's absolutely infuriating and insulting.

But Harold has to play dumb. "Okay, I'll see what I can do, Dave." Ugh. He keeps his eyes low, embarrassed in character. It hurts to watch.

He goes to at least get a little peace at his cubicle, but there's none to be found because Reese is there. 

"Not exactly what I expected." Finch is stunned. John holds up a little plaque he's found. "Software engineer of the month. That's very impressive. But it doesn't quite explain the uh... private security, the unlimited funds."

Finch knows he's caught, goes to sit in his mid-grade office cube chair. "No. No, it wouldn't."

"I did some digging down in HR. Seems you've worked here for 17 years." John leans over on his fist, trying to read this strange man living this strange double life. Double, at least. "Only been promoted twice." He leans in, amused. "So, how many of these people know you own the entire company?"

"None of them," Finch says quietly. "The best place to hide, Mr. Reese, _as you well know_ , is in plain sight."

"And if I speak too loudly, say the wrong thing?"

"The entire department could be overhauled. Some would be reassigned, promoted." He looks over at his terrible boss Dave, hassling some woman now. "Some would be fired."

"I'll make it quick, then. The good news, the girl is alive. And, uh..." He holds up his freshly bandaged hand. "Kicking. Seems she has some trust issues." He's lost her, but he knows how she's been getting along: ATM skimmers. 

Finch stashes the one Reese has away in his briefcase. He'll try to see if she's selling the account numbers she's skimmed online. "Her uncle's hiding from a dozen different creditors. But I'll find him." Love his endless resolve.

Reese goes, and the lady who welcomed Harold earlier strolls up. "So... who's your friend, Harold?" Everyone thinks Reese is Harold's handsome younger boyfriend. Office lady is excited to have new gossip to deal. He is much less so.

John's taken Fusco to go find some hitmen and see if he can find who took this job. They're looking for a fixer who hangs out in a bar.

"Hey, he don't talk to people who just walk into the joint."

"Lionel, are you worried about me? I'm touched." 

John doesn't need anyone's worry. He walks in like it's nothing. Fusco's pretty sure he's about to be annihilated, but he's going to learn there's more to Reese than meets the eye.

First time through the door and they throw him out into a bunch of trash bags, threatening him. Reese simply gets up, dusts himself off, and flicks his eyebrows at Fusco. _Watch this._ He definitely is.

John walks back in and this time, there's a fight. We can see a little from the window, hear more in muffled sound. Glass breaking, a little gunfire. This time Reese leaves under his own power, leaving a bunch of biker type guys writhing behind him in the bar. Fusco can't believe it. John's a little rumpled, hair a little mussed, but he got what he came for.

He goes to see the contract killer in prison and threatens him about other murders he's done, like the brother of the gang leader of his cell block. The guy's listening now from the other side of the glass.

"I get it," Hitman says. "You're like me. A killer. A genuine bad guy." John would say yes, but everyday he's proving he's not. "Then I don't have to explain to you what happened to those people on that boat. You already know." Yes, he does.

The hitman says he doesn't kill kids for any amount of money. He let the girl go. When John asks him who hired him, he doesn't have a name, only a question back. "Who hired you?"

We see his boss, still at his menial day job. He's got a new lead for Reese. The work doesn't end. It is purgatory, heaven and hell bound together, this strange afterlife they share.

John's out looking at the new real estate company they're after. He still has that ludicrous bluetooth earpiece. Upgrade him already, Finch!

It's been a productive day, though. John found the uncle and Finch found the girl. Reese is on it.

He finds her at a laundromat and tries a gentler approach this time. "Hey," he says, waving with his bandaged hand. "You got me pretty good back there." She tries to run to the back. "Not looking for a rematch." While John tries to explain he's there to help her, she's got her box cutter back out. There's no reason for her to believe any of this.

"No one's gonna hurt you again. 'Cause I won't let them." He's trying to reach her with gentleness now, the protectiveness in his eyes.

"You really shouldn't lie to kids," says the guy Reese is going to have to crush next coming up from behind to try to kill the girl.

They fight in the laundry and John uses the machines to his advantage, smashing the guy's gun hand in a washer but the killer is giving John a run for his money. He's already pretty busted up and they're still fighting. He throws Reese through the front plate glass window and walks back toward the girl, frozen in fear with her little box cutter. He's about to kill her, but John puts three bullets in his chest and the man crumples.

John gets up painfully. He's definitely worse for wear, but he has to go after the girl, who's taken off running again.

The hitman stirs on the laundry floor, groaning, alive. He was smart enough to wear a vest.

Reese catches up to the girl by a park and holds her arm with his bandaged hand. "Theresa, are you going to trust me now?" 

She's still not into it. "I don't know you."

"You're gonna need to trust someone." True for all of them and so difficult.

John sets her up in a hotel room. "Ordered you room service. It's a $50 cheeseburger." Heh. 

He tries to talk to her, but he only gets that she thinks what happened is her uncle's fault. There's a knock at the door. John gets his gun ready and opens to find Finch, who is less than thrilled to be momentarily held at gunpoint.

Harold takes a few steps in and stops when he sees the poor girl looking scared and rough. He knows she has been through such horror. "Hello," he says quietly.

"Theresa, this is Harold, and he's gonna stay with you." Is this the first time John's used his first name? It's a good choice here, not directed at him but the girl, making this new random man she's supposed to trust seem less threatening.

"Nice room."

"Took the liberty of booking all four. Your card." Finch isn't overly thrilled with that either, but whatever, it's just money. It's not lives. 

He makes the best of it. "Guess I can use the miles." Ha.

John's trying to get Finch up to speed on minding her, but he makes sure to swipe the butter knife from the room service cart. Girl has a thing for blades and escaping. He takes the fork too.

"I need you to stay here with Harold. He'll take care of you." Reese has to go track the uncle and the weird real estate company. Before he leaves, he hands the silverware back to Finch.

"Don't dawdle," Harold says. He can watch the girl, but this is out of his element.

Reese corners the drunk uncle outside a bar and shoves him into a truck. Meanwhile, the hitman is tapping the aunt's phone.

John drags the uncle to the muddy marina the girl's family was killed in. He throws him to the filthy ground. His own shoes and pants will be ruined too, but he doesn't care. Uncle confesses that he's a moron patsy for an evil real estate company that funnels dirty money.

"She's alive, no thanks to you." John does not hide his contempt. Uncle is shocked to hear his niece didn't die with her family. "If you'd come forward, cleared your brother's name, she might not have spent the last two years hiding. From you."

Back at the hotel with Theresa, Harold is trying to gently talk to her about the future, where she can go when this is over. "You know, I went to see your aunt Elizabeth. She seems like a lovely person."

"You tell her about me?"

"No, of course not. But she did mention how much she missed you. She even showed me an old photo." Poor girl is so alone and so is her sweet aunt. Harold is direct and straight with her. "You know there's no changing what happened to your family, but you do still have someone out there that loves you."

Theresa is so past that concept she can't even conceive of it. "Yeah? What do you know?"

He limps slowly over toward her. "I know what it's like to lose someone. And to feel the need to disappear." That he does. He's very good at knowing how to connect with people, even if he feels like he isn't. He looks at her, sympathetic, understanding, aching too. "But trust me, you don't want to leave people behind." Oh, poor sweet Finch. He has someone out there who still loves him too. 

In the past, 2007, this time it's Finch walking in to see Nathan in the warehouse room. It's now filled to the brim with server stacks. Nathan is sitting at the desk, looking at faces on multiple monitors. Something is bothering him deeply.

"When were you going to tell me?"

Finch knows he's caught, shrugs. "I wasn't gonna tell you, I guess." Because he knew Nathan could never live with it, unlike him with his skill at emotional compartmentalizing. "I'd rather I didn't know myself."

But now Nathan does know, and it's killing him. "All these people. And this damn machine knew. You knew. That someone wanted to harm them, kill them. And you did nothing?"

Harold feels it, but has walled it off. "You knew what we were building here." He sits, trying to explain as much to himself as to Nathan. "This thing looks for plotters, for schemers. It looks for malicious intent." He stares at Nathan, imploring him to agree, to understand the reasoning he'd allowed himself to live with. "But a machine doesn't understand the difference between those crimes that are relevant to national security and the ones that are irrelevant." 

And that's a bridge too far for Nathan. He shakes his head, rising from the chair. 

"Irrelevant?" He paces, appalled. "So... So you taught it the difference? You want to play god? Is that the deal?"

"No. _I don't!_ That's the whole point." He thinks if he shops out the neglect, it won't be on his hands. Nathan knows that will never be the case. 

"There are exactly eight people in the world that know that this thing exists. If anyone else ever found out, there'd be such an outcry... they'd turn it off. The _intelligence_ the machine produces has already foiled a half dozen major terrorist plots." Yes, that's true, Harold, but.... But.

"How are we supposed to live with this, knowing that someone out there needs help?" Nathan, good hearted, flawed Nathan cannot tolerate the idea of standing by and doing nothing. Harold knows it's bad, feels it, but he thinks he can keep it separate. He believes that this is more important than just a life here or there. He will come to understand, but only at the highest cost.

"Well, we don't have to." And here comes his way of wishing this agonizing awareness away, walling it behind brick like the cask of amontillado. "I've coded the machine." He reaches over, turns off the monitors showing the faces of the doomed. "Every night at midnight, it deletes the irrelevant list." Oh, god, the last monitor he turns off shows Jessica's face. If he'd only listened to Nathan here. "We didn't build this to save somebody. We built it to save everybody." He adjusts his tie, tightening his protection around himself.

Back in the present, the hitman is at the loser uncle's house. He wants information.

At the hotel, Finch is on the phone with Reese and has his back turned as the girl takes off. She trusts no one and for good reason. He catches up enough to at least see her down the hallway, and he calls out to her.

"Wait. Theresa. You know I can't keep up with you. Can I ask you where you're going?"

"I'm better off alone."

"And how's that?"

"It's safer."

"I don't think so. Please." He limps toward her and repeats John's words. "Sooner or later, you're gonna have to trust someone." This is a lesson he is slowly learning himself, but he's always so much better at giving advice than taking it. 

Meanwhile, her uncle is being tortured to death. He does one good thing in his life and protects her, knowing it is his end. He is right.

An evil suited businessman and his evil suited councilman counterpart are talking about their plans for this real estate deal as Reese watches through binoculars. 

Carter's at the scene with the now-dead uncle. He died with the girl's picture that Reese gave him stuffed into his mouth. She's off to find her.

Theresa calls her aunt, her last connection left in the world. The aunt picks up, but unfortunately so does the hitman on the wiretap. Theresa can't bear to speak and hangs up abruptly but it's already too late. The hitman's on his way.

The evil businessman gets a text that the girl's been found and is being taken care of. His smarmy smile of approval gets wiped off his face instantly when his car is t-boned, plowed by a giant red garbage truck. It rolls on its side, glass scattering. 

John hops out of the truck, cool and smooth. He saunters up to the businessman, dangling half out of the car and bleeding. He tells the man to call off the dogs and save Theresa, but the man says that he can't, it's already done. John hops up to call Harold and warn him.

"He's coming, Finch. Get off that floor." Harold blanches. This is it. He tells the girl they have to go.

They hustle down the hallway as fast as they can go. She's ahead of him, far more nimble. But the elevator is coming up now and they're out of time. They dash inside a room and lock the door, gasping. Hitman cuts the cameras, breaks off the handle to the emergency exit. He's on his way.

Finch realizes he's going to kill the fusebox and look for lit rooms. He sends Theresa to turn them off and buy them time. They hide behind a couch on the floor, terrified, listening. 

"I told you we should have left," she says. It's _we_ this time.

"You did. I'm sorry."

The hitman is in the adjoining room. Finch rises and quickly asks for her phone. He has an idea.

Behind the door where the hitman is ready to pounce, he can hear them talking, debating where to go, what to do. When he kicks in the door, he finds their voices coming from the hotel room's phone. Good trick, Finch.

They're hurrying away as best they can. The elevator's too slow, so he leads her down a service hallway and she tries to bar the door behind them with a 2x4 and a cart. Finch looks for a way out, but all the options are unusable save one. 

"Fire escape! You can go down." She starts climbing out while he watches for their pursuer, who's still fighting with the door. "Come on, go. Go."

She looks up at him. "You comin'?"

"I can't get through there." He puts his hand on her shoulder. "You have to go without me."

She stands back up out of the window and fishes around in her pocket for her trusty little box cutter. "I'm staying with you." 

Finch is stunned as she takes his hand. That she would reject safety for herself to stand by him. But there's no time for anything, because the hitman is here. Harold puts her behind him, but it's nothing. The man coming for them will easily kill them both. Or he would if he didn't immediately get shot three times from the side and fall dead to the floor.

Finch and the girl are frozen, terrified at what they've seen. Reese walks up to find them holding hands at the end of the hallway. He's saved them, her for the second time today, and Finch for the first time ever.

At the station, Carter gets a phone call. It's John. "You've been asking a lot of questions about me. It's time we sat down face to face."

"Who is this?"

"You know who." Yeah, she does. "You want to meet me or not?"

She goes to meet him ready. Her weapon is at her side, her backup is nearby and in her ear. 

"Wait for my signal. _Be careful._ This guy's as dangerous as they get."

In the park, there's no sign of John, but there is one face she recognizes. It's the girl. And she's bundled in Reese's suit coat.

"Sweetheart? What are you doing here?"

"Are you Detective Carter? My friend said I could trust you." 

She purses her lips. He's helped again, for whatever reason. She takes the girl away as Reese and Finch watch from across the street. John's just in his shirtsleeves now, of course. Silently, they part, walking away in opposite directions.

Fusco arrests the businessman, still badly roughed up from the car crash. Carter's with the girl at the station. She's still wearing John's coat.

"So you can't tell me anything about how this man looks? Hotel staff said they might have seen _two_ people coming and going, but there's nothing on the surveillance cameras." The way that keeps happening is giving Carter a headache. "Was there anyone else helping you?"

Savvy Theresa turns her head to look at her. "It was a pretty traumatic experience. I don't remember much at all."

Carter knows she's lying, but she obviously isn't going to press the poor thing. She really has been through hell and back.

Her aunt arrives at last and catches everybody's eye. Theresa goes to her, falls into her arms, and they cry together, finally not alone anymore. Carter looks on, happy for them.

John's back at IFT in cubicle hell, but Finch's cube is empty now. Office busybody lady strolls up.

"Are you looking for Harold?"

"Is he taking another personal day?"

She scoffs. "I don't think so. I was hoping _you_ knew. Maggie said he'd been transferred, but Dave said he was laid off." Of course Dave did. Why is he still there? Shouldn't he have been fired? "He didn't even say goodbye."

John's phone rings. 

"And here I was thinking we were getting a little closer, _Harold._ " He is finally using his first name now directly to him, but as a weapon.

Finch is walking out with a banker's box of his desk stuff. "I told you I'm a very private person."

"Well, you're gonna need to trust someone at some point."

"Trust?" he says as he comes up on the door. It's raining outside, and black umbrellas are everywhere protecting business people in expensive clothes and shoes. "That's not something I come by very easily. I have my reasons."

John's smiling a little. This game may be frustrating, but the cat and mouse is at least a little amusing. "Are you ever going to tell me those reasons?"

Finch's box of stuff goes directly in the trash.

"Don't call me, Mr. Reese. I'll call you."

He walks out through the revolving door and brings up his own black umbrella. Beside the door is a statue, a bust in bronze. It's Nathan, his hair brushed back, his eyes shadowed in the light. Below is a marker.

The Founder  
1962-2010  
In Loving Memory

Yes, he is remembered, and yes, he is still loved.


	4. POI 1x03 - Mission Creep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese's special softness to lost soldiers nearly gets him killed for the first of many times and Finch does something daring to save him as Carter edges ever closer.

### POI 1x03 - Mission Creep

#### Landmarks

  * Finch risks his own safety to save John's life for the first time
  * Carter and John have a conversation for the first time since their meeting at the station



* * *

Poor Finch has fallen asleep at his desk, head piled onto his bare arm. He works himself to exhaustion frequently. His sleeves are rolled up, his glasses are off and lying just ahead. Reese strolls in and stops just behind him. Harold's softly snoring.

John tries to wake him as gently as he can without touching him. He sets coffee in front of him next to his head. "Good morning, Finch," he says, barely audible.

Finch sucks in a breath to wake, startled, and pulls his head up. He looks up to see Reese, casually drinking his own morning dose of caffeine. Finch squints at him without his glasses. "Don't you knock?"

John shrugs. "Not if I can help it." Finch is taking a moment waking up, gathering his wits. "I feel bad about blowing your cover identity," John says. He should. That was cultivated for seventeen long, humiliating years. "Been, uh, looking for a new job for you. Dog walker, maybe, or concert pianist?" Dog walker yes, but later, John.

He sets the paper down as Finch finally puts his glasses back on and gathers more of his cultivated containment. He's much more delicate and vulnerable without them. They are his first and last line of defense. He leans back, now in full seriousness.

"I have a job, Mr. Reese, and so do you. The machine has sent us a new number." From this point forward, Finch stops pretending he can run even a semblance of a normal life. This, here and now, this is his life's work for every day to come. 

Finch rises to give the background on their number, but can't help a pause and a soft groan in doing it. He'll pay for sleeping like that today. John behind him presses his lips into a line and puts his coffee down. He would never say anything, but it hurts to see Finch in what clearly must be a serious amount of pain. If he took better care of himself, it might not be so bad, but Harold is driven. It won't stop him. So John just watches him limp over to the glass, nothing else to do.

Their number is a soldier just back from Afghanistan.

"Army commendation medal, purple heart. Guy was a fighter."

"Just like you," Finch says, making the parallel explicit. He looks awful, arms folded tight against his chest, body slightly curling in on itself. He must be in so much pain, but he will say nothing and John will say nothing and everybody feels terrible.

John's talking about how most of the infantry their number was in were kids. He fought alongside them. "Joined up because they lost family or friends when the towers came down." In the early seasons, this show is really about the two cataclysms that marked our time then – 9/11 and the financial crash – and the technological revolution happening all the while.

"Over there, they grew up fast. Or they died," John says. Finch looks on with sympathy. He's never been to war, but he knows scars. John is covered with them, inside and out.

"Well, at least Joey came home alive. Now you can help him stay that way."

John is going to find this guy, now working as a doorman. But he turns around just before he leaves. "And, uh, Finch? If you're gonna work all night, you should try to get some exercise."

Finch is annoyed with the advice, but this is good for him, to have someone minding him, interested in his well being, even if it's just this tiny amount of half-joking half-chiding instruction.

Our doorman soldier is really good at schmoozing the rich old ladies who live in his building. It's easy, he's charming and good looking. His girlfriend waited six years for him while he was deployed. That waiting... that's another thing John's sensitive to.

"Hey, Finch. Finch, are you there?" Hey, Harold finally gave John a professional earpiece, now we're talking.

"Yes," he says, straining through the word. "Is there a problem?" We see (and John can't) that he's taken Reese's advice and is now doing pushups on the floor. It's good to see this, that although Finch is handicapped and deals with chronic pain, there's still so much that he can do, and he's deceptively quite strong. All John can hear is his rhythmic hard breaths, each one the top of a pushup.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing!" He shuts the book he'd kept below him while he was working out. He's always reading, on a screen or in one of his innumerable books.

"Thought you said you'd never lie to me." Heh. Finch is in a gray t-shirt for working out, one of the infrequent times we see him out of his suit of armor.

"What's the problem, Mr. Reese?" Their guy is seemingly doing nothing. John sends over the garbled text he got.

"Anchor D-0, is that supposed to mean something?"

"I don't know, you're the genius."

John follows him into a bank. It's all very boring day to day business until the guy pulls down a balaclava and another starts shooting warning shots. It's a robbery. So much for this day being dull.

For a moment as John's on his hands and knees, he considers intervening here. But a guy in the robbery team is on him fast and tells him to get down, and John is not going to risk civilians at that point. They're doing a countdown, less than a minute. A security guard on the ground near him goes for his ankle piece, but John covers his hand and shakes his head. _You'll only get yourself killed._

And then they're gone. The people on the floor start pushing themselves up, shocked and afraid. 

"I'm back, Mr. Reese," Finch says so helpfully in his ear. John sighs, half collapsing onto the floor again. _Oh, thanks._ "I've deciphered that text. It's a street address, for a bank."

"No kidding, Finch. What I said about our guy being boring?" He rubs at his temples. This is more than he bargained for all at once. "I take it back."

At least no one got killed. John helped in that.

Oh no, we're back in time, 2006 at the airport. It's John's last chance, and he blows it.

She walks up to him. He can barely believe it.

"John." It's Jessica, still beautiful, still in love with him.

She smiles, laughs a little, as surprised as he is. "I didn't know you were back from over there." The smile fades to nothing.

"Jessica." They take each other in. "I'm not... I'm just... Heading back, actually."

"Where's your uniform?" Yeah, about that.

"Uh... I got a new job."

"One of those jobs you can't talk about?"

They both laugh, but no one is happy.

In the present, he and Harold are trying to work out what's going on.

"So our friend Joey's a bank robber." Finch is suited up now, working at his desk. Reese is in casual gear, on assignment.

"Is that why the Machine gave us Joey's number?"

To no one but himself, Finch shakes his head. "I built the Machine to look for lethal intent. Armed robbery wouldn't normally make the cut. Either way, I say we gift wrap him and give him to the NYPD before someone winds up dead."

John's not having it. "Finch, the guy was a good soldier. Let me at least find out how he got into this mess."

"Okay..." Finch says, increasingly concerned. "But don't let your personal feelings warp your judgement. No one forced him to go robbing banks."

Their boy is meeting another woman, giving her an envelope full of money.

Finch is not optimistic. "Bank robber and a cheat. Unlikely to have a happy ending." Nobody is sure what's going on still, or who's even in danger.

With some fishing and surveillance, they find another guy in the gang, a cabbie, and then the ringleader, a former master sergeant now owner of a bar called the Green Zone by the name of Latimer.

"I want to get close to Latimer. And I'll need a cover story."

"I'll get on that."

"And I need you to create a vacancy for me... with the gang."

Finch looks at him surprised, and thinks for a moment. "I'll get on that too. Anything else?"

"No, that'll do for now." And John's gone. Finch is just left standing there, blinking. Who's working for who here? 

It's Coney Island. At the bar, John tries to go in smiling, hand out for shaking. That gets stonewalled. He says something about a marine buddy in San Diego pointing him this way. He's got a name from Finch's cover research that gets him into a conversation.

John pushes for a job, but not a straight one. "I'm not looking for wages. I'm only interested in lump sums." He can prove his worth. "I've got experience you can use. Skills."

"What kind of skills?"

"You have a .45 under the counter, a shotgun next to the register, and I can get to them both before you." He nods a little when the guy just stares. _Told you._

Meanwhile, Finch is working on that vacancy in the gang. He's in the cabbie's hack, and they've just come up to his stop. "Keep the change. Let me get my case out of the trunk." Finch looks a bit nervous as he steps out, buttoning his coat. It takes him a minute to get his briefcase, which the cabbie doesn't notice because he's busy counting his sizable overpayment. We hear sirens louder and louder as Finch limps away, looking tense and never looking back.

The cops race up. "Yellow cab driver! Out of your vehicle!" Finch wants to look back, but instead he just raises his eyebrows, feeling a little accomplished. This is actually going to work. 

There are a bunch of guns now in the cab's trunk. "I don't know anything about those!" the cabbie cries. "Those are not mine!" They are now.

And we're checking in on Carter. She's got a visitor from Robbery. "I hear you're chasing after some Special Forces guy. Come here, I may have something for you. His prints showed up on a bank job yesterday."

"On a bank job?" That doesn't sound like the Man in the Suit she knows.

Robbery has a video. "See that guard there? Tries to be a hero. Someone stops him from getting his head blown off." We see John again, face invisible, covering the man's ankle holster to keep everyone alive. They ran the prints afterwards. "It was your mystery man."

"Well, did they stop him? Interview him?"

"No, he slipped away before the first units got there."

"Of course." Carter's so frustrated by this guy. How is he everywhere? But she keeps watching the tape and picks up on something. The movement of the robbers, it's organized. Military. And one's got a mil spec radio. "They're soldiers." She's fast.

"So your Special Forces guy fits right in. I mean, he could be their inside man." Carter has her doubts on that one. She keeps the video.

John's got his spot on the team. He goes to meet the gang, his new temporary partners. And look who it is, our boy Joey. They promptly throw a bag over John's head and stuff him into a van.

They take him to the middle of nowhere to clear him. "ID checks out." Of course it does, Finch made it. "Pay as you go cell phone, bought two days ago. Ran the calls, mainly take-out, couple to some jarheads in San Diego, last call's from Latimer." Excellent spoofing work, Finch. Joey smashes the phone, points his gun at Reese's head.

"What the hell is this about?" John's voice is stifled as a big guy next to him has his arm across his larynx. "I thought Latimer wanted you to meet me?"

"He also told us to put a bullet in your head if we didn't like you, and right now, we don't."

Again, he has to prove his worth, which he does with his immaculate observational skills. When they ask how he knows their unit, he says, "Big fella's got it tattooed all over his arm." Also, Finch told him. 

And that seals the deal. Well done, John. He looks with some sympathy at lost young Joey, who finally puts down his gun and hands him a card.

"You don't call us. We call you." John's used to that by now.

At the library, Reese is trying to figure Joey out at the glass. Finch watches him out of focus from behind. "Killing in battle, in combat, is one thing. Killing someone up close... someone who can't fight back..." he turns around to Finch. "That takes a different sort of killer." One like him, he means. Poor Reese. He truly believes he is an irredeemable monster. But he can keep others from becoming like him. "And Joey's not one of them."

"So you think Joey's the target. Then who's gunning for him? One of the gang? One of the _women_? Do we even know _why_ he's such a mess? He's got a job, pretty girlfriend, good service record. He's throwing it all away. He's gonna end up in prison. Or dead."

"You're right, but..." John says, and he walks up to his boss close and smiles, taps him on the back. "Not every ex-soldier meets a reclusive billionaire." He knows how lucky he is that Finch found him and pulled him out of his own downward spiral.

Joey's checking in with his girlfriend. She wants him to move in with her. He says something about trouble at work. Yeah, you could say that.

Oh no, another trip back to the moment John ruined his life.

"John... I didn't know you were back from over there." It's always her.

We go back through the dialogue, but this time it keeps going. 

"One of those jobs you can't talk about?" 

The awkward laughing, until Reese looks down. She's wearing a diamond. His face falls, realizing it.

"Oh, yeah," she says. "I... uh... got engaged." Yeah, he noticed that one. "I'm... I'm moving back east next month." She keeps nodding, confirming this all to herself, ashamed, confused, torn. "His name's Peter." She's trying to read him.

"Peter." His heart is crushed. He knew she couldn't wait forever, but he didn't think he'd have to see it up close and personal like this. "He's a lucky guy."

Jessica's hurting too. "I waited for you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"No. No, you didn't. You just... left. Because you thought you'd get killed over there, and that would hurt me." In trying to protect her, he hurt himself and broke her heart anyway. He looks down, shamed. "But I think the truth is that... it was easier for you to be alone."

"That's one of the things you learn over there. In the end we're all alone. And no one's coming to save you." God, Reese is so broken, his heart crushed by trauma and fear.

He goes to walk away, but leans in first. "Be happy with Peter." He brushes past her, the last time they will ever touch.

In the present, Carter's working the bank robbers. Her guy has all the info. "Haven't killed anyone, haven't even hurt anyone. In and out in 60 seconds, every time." Every time is 12 by now.

She's got a clue – the radios they're using are high end military grade, spectrum hopping, impossible to intercept. She used them herself, "in Iraq _and_ Afghanistan." They're only available from the military itself, which means they're stolen from a base. She thinks she knows the base, but it was six months ago, and they never found anything. "No joy." She has the robbery guy look into soldiers from that Fort Drum in the last six months. "Twelve robberies, you must have _some_ physical descriptions."

John is watching Joey watching some kids on a playground. Pieces are starting to come together. There's a particular little girl getting picked up by her mom. It's Joey's other woman. 

"You think she's Joey's?" 

"Sure looks like that." Joey's pining away behind a tree and some parked cars. "You should be able to find the girl's name if Sunny Days Kindergarten's firewalls aren't too tough for you."

Finch is listening with his headset on in the library, concentrating on his screen. He is already on the task and sends Reese to go chat up Joey.

He makes sure Joey runs into him at a bar. He's getting a beer, Joey steps up to him.

"I thought you said no contact," John says. "What are you doing? Following me?" Heh.

"I live here, pal, what's your excuse?"

"I'm staying at a fleapit on Colby."

He buys Joey a beer, mentions he's low on cash again. "How long before we get some action?"

"Up to Latimer. We just follow orders."

"Orders. Don't you ever get sick of them?"

"Maybe. But they make life simple." That they do. Reese enjoys that release from the pressure to decide as well. He's listless without direction.

Joey talks about how he spent six years dreaming about coming home, but home is a ruin. "There's no money, no jobs. Bankers gone and lost it all, robbed the country blind." This bit is overheard by two jerks in business suits behind them. "I mean, it's like, what the hell are we fightin' for, you know? The joke's on us." 

The banker tools step up. "Hey. You guys were soldiers, right? What, like Iraq, Afghanistan? Some serious stuff. Yeah, but you volunteered. Nobody asked you to go. It's not like the country owes you a living." They're cartoonishly terrible, even if the sick thing is this is a pretty standard argument.

Joey tries to tamp it down. "We got it, pal."

"No, you don't got it. Talkin' about bankers like you know anything. It's not been easy for us either." Guy, just walk away while you still can walk. 

Reese tries to end this with words too. "Really sorry about that, but we're talking here."

"Hey, so are we." And now one of the banker guys is trying to pull his friend away to keep this from escalating, but banker #1 has had enough mid-grade whiskey to make him itch to prove his masculinity to the soldiers in front of him who threaten it. He leans into John, points his finger in his face. "Guys like you gotta adapt. It's the knowledge economy now. Time to use _this_ , my friend." And he uses that finger to push Reese's forehead back. BAD MOVE, GUY.

"Okay." And John headbutts him right in the face. Joey punches banker #2's lights out and tells John they have to leave now. No kidding. 

They walk and talk down the street. Joey says he had a debt to pay. Reese's ears perk up. There we go, that's a lead. 

"Money?"

"More like an obligation." 

John asks about kids and he's quick to say no. "Why do you say that?"

One of their group, Straub, has debts too, but his are from gambling. John thinks that's why he's jumpy, but Joey says it's because he's been blown up twice. Ugh, what we do to soldiers.

Finch has the kindergarten records, which gives him the names of the girl and the mom, but no ID for the dad yet. John's off to find Straub.

Straub is squirrelly, runs up to the gang leader Latimer, complaining that he needs more of a cut from the jobs they're pulling. He's trying to protect his mom's apartment, which he stupidly used as collateral. They go inside, Latimer talks up some previous guys on his crew who are now living it up in Mexico. Straub wonders if the equal split between the crew at the end of the job stays the same if not all of them come back. It does, so now he has a solution. Eliminate the competition.

Carter's robbery guy has one of the men in the gang tracked. "If Teddy makes a move," she tells him, "you call me. I don't care what time."

John gets the call to run the next job with the gang so he gives a heads up to Finch.

"You're not going in _with_ them?"

"Gotta watch Joey's back. Don't trust his friend Straub one bit."

Finch limps back over to his desk. "I did not understand "infiltrate the gang" to mean "join them in their robberies"."

"No choice. I'll keep the line open. Monitor the police band for me."

In the van on the way, they hand Reese a big assault rifle. He wonders why, and they tell him they're hitting a mob gambling joint. This is looking bad already and they aren't even in the building yet. 

Carter and her guy have their gang member tracked to the neighborhood. They're waiting, looking. And when John and the crew bust the door with a bang, they're right there to hear it. They call for backup.

Finch catches that call. "Reese, NYPD dispatch just received a backup call for _that address._ " There's no response. "John? _NYPD is en route!_ Do you hear me?" And there's the first time Harold calls him John, under pressure, in the midst of trying to save his life.

Reese had been watching them gather the cash off the casino tables, trying to keep everyone alive there himself. Finally, he makes the first indication he's heard any of what Finch has been desperately yelling in his ear.

"We've gotta move out! Cops are coming!"

"How the hell do _you_ know?" asks Joey.

John points to his ear. "Police band. They have our address."

Joey tells them to go and leave the money, but greedy and desperate Straub has no intention of that. Meanwhile, one of the mob casino guys has picked up a pistol. He aims to kill one of the gang, but Reese knocks him down, keeping everyone breathing for the time being.

They run out, without the money but with their lives. Straub is furious, saying he doesn't hear any sirens, but they fire up seconds later. 

"Damn lucky for us he was listening in," Joey says. 

Carter and her guy bust into the casino. It's just illegal gamblers. She lowers her gun, disappointed. Too late, again.

Finch and Reese are in the library, both looking down. Reese is standing minus his coat, hands behind his back. Finch is leaned over his ergonomic chair. They're listening to Straub begging Latimer for another chance, because he's furious they didn't bring anything back from this one.

"And keep an eye on the new guy. You might need him going in, not sure you're gonna need him coming out."

Finch looks at him, stern through his glasses. "Now how can we wrap this up? It can't go on, John, somebody's going to get killed." And given what they just heard, it might well be Reese.

"Let me talk to Joey first."

"To what end?"

"I want to find out what his guilt trip is. Try to cure him of it."

Finch slides down into his chair, straining in his voice a little as he does it. Transitions are always the hardest for him. 

"Might be more complicated than you think. I got into Joey's bank accounts. Last four months, he's paid nearly $10,000 into a 529 savings plan for the little girl, Amy Myles. It'll pay for her to go to college."

"Amy has to be Joey's kid."

"But she's not.... Hospital records show her daddy was called Frank Stephens." 

Reese catches it. " _Was._ "

"Killed in Afghanistan." And that explains it. A war buddy.

John meets Joey out by the water at Coney Island. There's a new job tonight. "You're gonna risk it all again? You know Straub's going off the rails."

But Joey wants to protect him, have his back. He wants to protect everyone, which is why John wants so much to protect him. He finally gets Joey to tell him the story of his debt. His friend Frank took his place on a patrol and caught the death that should have been his. Now he is bound to Frank's family, owing them his life and everything else.

And John can't love this guy more. He watches him, squinting into the sun, admiring the good heart in the man before him. He's so devoted to others, giving of himself. It's the highest virtue anyone can have to John.

"You tell anyone else?"

"No, not even my girlfriend."

"So you're still fighting the war. She's still waiting."

"When this is done... I'm with her completely."

John looks out into the vast, empty sea and turns back to Joey. "Be with her now." He's begging himself in the past, trying to undo a mistake that is years gone for him but is right now for Joey. But Joey won't give up the job because he owes his dead friend, and so they're both stuck. 

John goes to scout the girlfriend. She's waiting his table. He passes himself as an army friend of Joey's, only in town for a few days.

"He's crazy about you, you know that?"

"It's funny his friends know more about what he's feeling than I do." Closed off men. It's a plague. 

John charms her with his easy smile and his friendly knowledge. She gives him more than he even asked for, telling him about how he still seems gone. But that's perfect. He gives her an out, a trial.

"If Joey doesn't come to his senses, plenty more fish in the sea."

She laughs. "No, I'm stuck with him. Loved him since I was so high. That's the way it is."

And now he knows, they love each other and must be protected together. He can't let Joey go in alone.

Finch calls. "Are you there, Mr. Reese? Get anywhere with your friend, Joey?"

"No. Can't cure someone of guilt." Doesn't mean you stop trying. For both of them, this whole endeavor they're on is one long futile attempt to cure guilt. "Soon as I find out what the next job is, go ahead and call the cops. They can pull the whole gang in."

"You did what you could."

"Yep." But he has no intention of stopping now. Later, Finch will be able to read his self sacrificing intent better.

Carter did some serious digging. She's found the guys Latimer was claiming were sunning in Mexico. They're three months in the ground after being shot in the head. She's worked it out.

"It explains why the gang keeps going. Why they don't fall out. Once they've done four or five jobs, someone bumps them off, recruits some new suckers."

Latimer is getting instructions on a call from someone he refers to as "sir". They're going into long term evidence lockup. 

In the van, they're dressed in suits and ties for this job. Straub says they're getting one item, easily concealed, worth $400 grand.

Finch is listening to Latimer's call. The caller wants no loose ends and Latimer's fine with that, he was done with them anyway. Finch is horrified. They're walking into a bloodbath.

But before he can tell Reese, Straub makes everyone dump their phones and John's earpiece into a bucket of water. Finch has no way now of contacting John to warn him. No way at a distance, at least.

The gang breaks in from the back. But Finch is already there in the front, asking in his most boring insurance guy voice about probate issues with the Ulman estate or some such blather to the guy inside the security booth. 

And the gang arrives right on time. Finch puts his hands up as demanded. When he sees him, Reese freezes. His eyes just visible behind his balaclava are stunned and fearful. Harold's put himself in serious danger to be here. This isn't for nothing. Something is wrong.

The men demand he get on the ground, so Finch scrunches down under the clerk window, keeping his hands up. Reese gets assigned to watch the door, and Finch is watching him.

In the back, they're locating what they came for. Up front, the other guard is getting antsy, and Reese knows he needs to find out why Finch is here. Harold looks up at him with wide eyes.

"You! Stop staring at me! I said, stop looking at me!" He grabs Finch by the collar and drags him up to get in his face. Finch turns away from the other guy, looking like he's wincing, actually aiming for Reese's ear.

"Latimer set you up. It's a trap."

Reese absorbs this and throws Finch back to the ground. On close inspection, he's actually pretty gentle. It's for show. He tells the other guy to guard the people out front as he goes in the back to see what's happening. They're finally finding what they need. 

Out front, now Finch is the hostage who sees a security guard quietly ready a gun. Only this one actually does it because no one is close enough to stop him. 

The gang gets their stuff as Reese tells them it's a trap. Straub tries to threaten him but John threatens him right back. When they get to the front, he looks down one more time at Finch. Harold nods slightly toward the door and they head for it.

But the security guard gets a few shots off at the last second, tagging the guy behind Reese in the leg. Finch covers his ears and cowers at the terrible, deafening noise. John grabs the guy and drags him forward up the stairs. "Keep moving, Teddy. I got ya."

At the station, Carter's getting the news. Four guy team just hit an evidence locker. That's got to be the crew they're after. 

Outside, Reese and Joey are trying to help Teddy away. He's got his arms around both of them, clearly in pain. Staub is out front, looking skeevy. "Take him to the van," John says. "I'll cover you."

Latimer's in the van. When Straub hands over the envelope, he gets congratulations for being a good soldier, and two bullets to the chest. Reese knows the jig is up. He yells to Joey. "Run!"

Teddy's lost. Their weapons are rigged, useless. But Reese is packing his own material, a semi-auto pistol. Latimer takes off in the van.

Carter rolls up, once again too late. She's got two bodies, but nothing else. Well, she finds one thing. Teddy still has his special radio.

Reese is telling Joey to run as far as he can get. "Go south or west. Here's a couple of grand to keep you going. With your skills, you'll find work. But go now. And don't look back."

Joey wants to, but... "I can't. I can't, man. I have someone here."

"Call her and ask her to go with you." Joey's gaze flickers over John. "She loves you, Joey." He's so gentle here, sweet, his eyes shining. "Just tell her it's gonna be you and her now. Just you and her."

They share a bro love handshake and part. John's face falls gradually as he goes. Joey has hope for love and happiness in his life yet. John has lost all of his.

Then Carter's voice comes over the radio. "Can you hear me?" She's strolling outside, looking over the park. "I think you can. Guess you're out there, hiding in plain sight." She scans around, can't find him. "I keep looking for you. I keep finding myself in some bad situations."

John considers how to handle her persistence. She waits for his answer. Finally, he speaks.

"You could always stop looking for me."

She smiles a little at that, but, "Not an option. Now I've got two more bodies. I don't think you killed those guys. But I think you know who did."

"I'll take care of it." He can see her from this angle. She could see him too, but he's anonymous.

"Playing a _dangerous_ game. And I'm not sure I understand why." She's still looking, scanning.

"I've got my reasons." Just like Finch said he does.

"Maybe you do. But every killer I locked up thought they had a good reason. And that is how this ends. Sooner or later, I lock you up. Or find you bleeding out somewhere." She's not wrong.

He smiles. She's got that fire he loves. "I will take my chances." He walks away, still unknown.

Finch is giving his statement to the police. "I think I've told you everything that I can remember." Well, maybe not exactly everything. Carter walks by him. He knows who she is, and tracks her as she passes. 

She goes to find out what's missing now. "Looks like this is all they took," says one of the men. It's a box labeled "Elias, M.". We'll get to that soon enough.

At the library, Finch is wrapping up. He's looking at their glass wall, another case closed. "So, you let our bank robber get away."

Over the radio, Reese calls in. "He paid his dues. Deserved a second chance."

"Then are we done?"

"Not quite."

Latimer is giving his anonymous "sir" the envelope. "I hope that's what you wanted." Guy looks at pictures of a murdered woman, pulls out a packaged and labeled knife. "So we better talk money." 

Reese creeps into Latimer's apartment. He's silent, in his deadliest mode, but he senses something's wrong. Latimer is on his armchair. There's a WWII movie playing in black and white in front of him on an old TV. When he comes around, he realizes there's no job to do.

"Someone got here first. He's dead."

Finch is surprised. "Any idea who did it?"

"The name on the evidence box was Elias. That mean anything to you?"

Finch blinks, thinking. "No." He's standing in front of his list, now so long it has to be kept on two giant boards. "I'd better look into it," he says softly.

At a bus labled "Go Phoenix!!" Joey is waiting, handsome in his dark vest. Reese is waiting too, watching this unfold in secret. And there's Joey's girl, with her bag. "Hey." He's so grateful. They embrace and walk onto the bus and into the rest of their life together hand in hand. 

Reese watches, his face flat. So much conflicting emotion inside him. He thinks back to that moment in the airport, his one chance, lost. 

"The truth is that... it was easier for you to be alone," Jessica says again. And again, he goes into his broken logic.

"That's one of the things you learn over there. In the end, we're all alone. And no one is coming to save you."

She looks so sadly at him, at how hopeless he's become. 

"Be happy with Peter," he says, and he brushes by her to leave. But she turns and stops him.

"You don't believe that. Not... really." She takes a breath. "You... wanna be brave? Take a risk." Her eyes are wide, begging him, desperate for him to reach out to her. "Tell me to wait for you and... Say those words, and I will." She is taking a risk herself, throwing away her own engagement and future stability for the man she loves more than anyone she ever had or ever will. All he has to do is reach for her, and both their lives would be saved.

She nods, trying to get him to do it. He looks scared, lost. Emotional connection is not something he knows how to handle well. She waits, so beautiful. He clenches his jaw. And she grimaces. She knows. He's just not strong enough to do it. She's heartbroken.

"It would take real courage, wouldn't it?" Jessica turns, unable to bear any more as John just stands there silent and stone.

She gets further and further away. His eyes fill with emotion and tears and longing. "Wait for me," he says, quietly, uselessly. It's what he wants, what she wants, but he's not emotionally strong enough to go tell her. "Please," he begs to no one that can hear.

And it's over. Both of their fates are sealed this day.


	5. POI 1x04 - Cura Te Ipsum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese and Finch save a soul instead of a life, and John's capability and belief in his own darkness are put on full display.

### POI 1x04 - Cura Te Ipsum

#### Landmarks

  * Finch's injuries are made clear: spinal fusion, bone grafts and six pins holding his vertebrae together
  * Fusco tries to get Reese killed by a drug cartel
  * John possibly murders a man in cold blood and either way Finch lets it happen



#### Injuries

  * **Reese**
    * Knocked out with a cudgel
      * John concussion count: 2
    * Beaten with fists while tied to a chair 1



* * *

We start with a call. A woman, broken, sad. "Every time I close my eyes I see him. It won't stop. Maybe I'm already dead."

We're in a hospital. There's a doctor in charge, she's busy and focused. There's so much to do, people everywhere, a list to keep up on.

"Uh, what about the guy in four?" asks an orderly. "He's, uh, been waiting for three hours." Not uncommon in US emergency rooms. Honestly, it's amazing he even got in to a bed by then. The doctor sighs, takes the chart and pulls back the curtain.

The guy in four is Finch, in his vest only and wearing a blue hospital bracelet. He waves, friendly, but grimacing.

"You look rather busy today. I was hoping to avoid this." He laughs but groans a little. His face is pinched, although he stays smiling to her.

"Sorry about the wait." Her pager beeps again. It's a never-ending avalanche.

She shakes his hand. "I'm Dr. Tillman, hi."

He's formal, polite. "How do you do?"

She looks down, reads off his chart. "I see that you are experiencing some... back pain." You could say that.

"My doctor's playing golf in the _Caymans_ ," he says. She laughs. "I just need a refill on my pain medication." He's lying of course, but not nearly as much as we wish he was.

"On a scale of 1 to 5, how bad's your pain?"

"On a good day, 3." He looks up at her. "Today's not a good day." How much of this is honest? It's probably not far. Poor Finch. He carries his guilt as physical misery.

"Squeeze my hands?" She takes them, looks into his eyes, checking him over.

And then she puts up his x-rays, and there is the reality of why he's so limited in his motion, why he's so frequently in pain. He's got pins holding his spine together in his neck. It looks gruesome in black and white. Two lines of three metal pins each, gouged into his bones, holding him together.

"Oh. Judging from your bone grafts, it looks like you had spinal fusion surgery about... a year or two ago?"

He looks down. The memories are more painful than the injuries. "Yeah."

"You know, if your pain's chronic, there are other treatments." She's very sympathetic with him. He nods, he's heard all of this before. "How were you injured?"

He looks into the middle distance, into the nightmare and the fracture in his life that it was. "It's a long story," he says, understating it with a chuckle and a pained wince to get her to drop it. He squeezes his eyes shut. She feels for him.

"Please," he says, meeting her gaze, "I was hoping you might be able to just... give me a prescription."

"You really should have a full workup. CT, MRI..." He nods. He's heard this bit before too. "But... you are the most polite patient I've seen all week. So I will make an exception." She's just relieved not to have someone screaming at her or bleeding or dying.

When she turns her back to grab her pad, he palms her pager into his pocket, replacing it with an identical replica. 

"Okay, this is for three days. If you're still in pain, you have to come back, okay?" She clearly really cares. Finch appreciates care for others very much in people, as John does.

"That's quite all right, Dr. Tillman. I have everything I need." Yes, he does.

The new pager beeps and she picks it up. "Duty calls. Take care." And she's gone. He watches her go, then looks up at the small security camera on the ceiling. He hits a tiny button he's carrying, and it rotates back to see him as it was supposed to have been all along. His tracks are covered.

"Machine spit out a new number?" Reese is on the line. He's sitting, manspreading out on an emergency room waiting area chair. 

"Megan Tillman," Finch says. She was top of her class, hasn't missed a day of work since her residency began. Reese watches as she leaves. It's the end of her shift. 

As he follows her down the street, Finch gives him more background. She does 80 hours a week at the hospital, single, lives alone. John watches her order at a food truck. She bumps into the business suit guy behind her. He's watching her as she goes.

It's night now, they're still talking. She's got no enemies at the hospital as far as Finch can tell. No complaints or malpractice. "Seems friendly, well liked." We see a friend trying to lure her out for the evening. She turns her down flat. 

They're out in the cold on this one. "In other words?"

"In other words, we'll have to watch her around the clock to figure out what kind of trouble she's in."

"If you'd like a raise, Mr. Reese, all you have to do is ask." That's 100% true. Finch doesn't care at all about the money. But Reese doesn't either. Frankly, he'd do this for free and basically does. He does it for sustenance only. Enough food to keep him from starving, enough shelter to keep him from freezing, enough good to keep him from killing himself.

We watch John watching this woman in her apartment bathroom. He's got a huge zoom lens camera. If we didn't know and trust him, this would be supremely creepy. They're working the night shift, but she's putting on makeup.

"Looks like she's changed her mind about going out."

It's another one of those loud dark dance clubs. Reese is watching from the second floor while the doctor is down at the bar, drinking, her bare legs long and crossed. She's looking to get some attention.

Creepazoid comes up, immediately tries picking her up, slides his hand up her leg. She's not having any of that. Creep is drunk and moves to follow her. Reese spots a flash of metal inside his jacket. He's packing.

John tosses him into the men's room and onto the floor. Guy blubbers, begs not to be hurt. The gun turns out to be a cell phone. "Not my face!" he cries. He's so confused when John just drops his jacket and leaves.

"Everything all right?" Finch asks from his spot at dispatch at the library. "What happened?"

"Had to make a pit stop." John's working on his one liners.

"Wait..." And he's noticed something. "Mr. Wall Street. Second time I've seen this guy today." Yep, it's the dude she bumped into at the food truck.

"You sure?" He's sure.

John decides to bump into him too, knocking a guy and his drink into Mr. Wall Street at the same time. "Watch it, man."

And he is, because now he has the guy's wallet. Mr. Wall Street is Andrew Benton. And he's more than just your normal sleaze.

"He's carrying benzodiazepines." Finch freezes. He knows what that means too. "Roofies... date rape drug." John is disgusted. "I think we just found the threat, Finch. We're not the only ones following Dr. Tillman." He's looking back at her even as they speak.

Reese is getting into the library. He looks rough. They both do, they've been up all night. Dr. Tillman went home at 3:30, but she was at the hospital by sunrise, helping people, saving lives. 

"She hasn't stopped once except to get herself a cup of coffee. She's dedicated." So are they. Finch is watching her on the hospital security cams. He can move them with his joystick to follow her. "And not just to her job. She's been at the club almost every night of the week."

"A double life?"

"A dangerous one." He pulls out this Andrew Benton's drivers license. "She's attracted some unwanted attention."

Finch looks him up. Investment banker. We see him looking slick and slimy walking down the street with his briefcase. When Reese asks about a record, he gets an unusual answer.

"Technically, no... But there are a string of accusations against him. Stalking, harrassment, sexual assault." We see him flirting with a woman, picking up her case on the street. "As far as I can tell, he's never been formally charged."

John's sure he's a predator after the doctor. He does not take violence against women well at all.

He slides easily into Benton's apartment. It's a madman's place. As Reese copies the guy's laptop, he looks around. 

"Anything out of the ordinary?" Finch asks his eyes. 

Reese looks around at all the ludicrous monogrammed pillows and wall art. "Guy likes to mark his own territory." He steps toward the kitchen. There's a Warhol ripoff with the guy's face in four different exposures on the wall. "No coffeemaker." Yet there's a canister labeled coffee. Reese pulls out what looks like cocaine. "Benton's into something stronger." The files are copied now, so John slips out again.

At the police station, Carter is obsessing over the video of the robbery, frame by frame. Guy comes up. "Your ex-CIA guy – is he in it?"

She smirks. "He's the star."

"The guy in the ski mask? How do you know it's him?" She's watching the footage of Reese holding Finch by the collar. Finch has his hand on Reese's arm, which he then puts down to the counter for some balance. He's really not afraid enough for this situation.

"I just do," she says. "But, look at this. See that? They had an exchange." She rolls back the tape to watch Reese pick Finch up and throw him down again.

"Exchange?"

"Watch." And she runs through it again. Reese lifts Finch off the floor by his shirt yet another time. "Right there. He says something to the little guy. And look! Little guy says something back, right there."

"Well, did you get his name, his address?"

"Yeah, he's a paralegal. Name's Burdett." That's one of his names, at least.

"You think this Burdett heard something?" She gives him a knowing look. "Might lead you to your guy." She watches again. Reese holding Finch's collar, both of them leaned in close, talking.

At the library, Reese and Finch are sitting together going through Benton's pictures. It's one after another after another of him smiling with a million different young pretty women.

"Who are these women? Benton's conquests?" Finch hums his yes. Reese couldn't be any more sickened by this. "Any of them Megan Tillman?"

"No. He hasn't researched her online. He hasn't even looked up the area of her apartment or the hospital." We see the hospital security cam again. She's busy at work with a patient. "There's nothing to connect him to our doctor." John is squirming in his seat, beside himself with anger at this man. He has his hand up to his face, raking his fingers along his jaw in frustration.

"He's careful." Yet another picture of yet another woman. "Methodical." John and Finch look at each other. Both of them find this grotesque. 

Finch leans in to type. "Maybe he wasn't _always_ so careful. I've been combing through his history. Mr. Benton has an old college record that's been expunged. Might illuminate what kind of man we're dealing with. But..."

"We need access. And I know someone who can help." John is delighted he finally has a way forward, something to do.

Finch squints at Reese as John jumps up to leave. "I'm not all that comfortable with your arrangement with Detective Fusco." 

John strolls back a few steps. "He's an asset."

Finch isn't having any of that. "He's a corrupt police officer that tried to murder you."

"He's not the first person who's tried to kill me. Fusco will stay in line."

"Your detective is a nice pet to keep, Mr. Reese, but sooner or later..." John walks away, but Finch isn't finished. "He'll bite you back..."

Fusco doesn't look like he's biting anybody. He's playing stickball with his son in his shirt and tie. "You can't keep up with your old man, huh?" They laugh. The ball rolls away under a car, and someone walks up to him.

"Excuse me, Detective Fusco?" Uh, not good. It's three cartel guys. 

"Who are you guys supposed to be?"

"We're supposed to be drug dealers, except a group of very foolish cops stole most of our product." Fusco pays a lot for his dirty work. Should have stayed on the side of the angels, Lionel. He tries to play dumb.

"You got me confused." He looks over at his son, who's now standing waiting. "Detective Stills is the guy you want." And it just so happens that guy is decomposing in a swamp.

Cartel guy grins. "Stills is missing, and the rest of your dirty cop friends are in jail. That leaves you on the hook for a million dollars worth of cocaine. We want our money."

Lionel goes for the deadpan approach. "Let me go to the ATM, make a withdrawal."

Lee shouts from the court. "Dad, come on! Let's play!" 

Fusco's caught. This is exactly the wrong time for this. "Just a minute, buddy." He looks back at the cartel men. He's still out of breath, but now it's not just from the stickball.

"Our children, they, uh... they see too much violence." Cartel guy turns back to Fusco. "You have a good head on your shoulders. Bring us the money in two days and you get to come home to your son with it still attached. Win-win."

We're back at the club. The doctor's at her regular place, picking up wannabes at the bar, turning them down one by one. Benton is nowhere to be seen.

"She puts 16 hour days in at the hospital. Stays out all night. Why? What's driving her?"

And there's our friendly neighborhood rapist, right on time. And he finally makes a play on the doctor. Fake self-deprecation, an order of a martini. This guy's the package. 

But she's in. And she introduces herself as Kate.

Reese catches that too. "Why is she using a false name?"

She and the rapist walk out together.

"I do know a place, right around the corner..." he says. Reese is watching this whole thing. He has zero intention of allowing anything to happen to their kind, devoted doctor. "Full bar, comfy bed." Yeah, I bet.

"Oh, _your_ place." 

"Oh, do you want to go to my place? Sure!" He's so slimy. In the shadows, John's ready to cave his head in. "Come on, we'll do whatever you want. We'll hang out, have some drinks... maybe something stronger..."

And that's enough for John right there. He starts moving toward them. He only stops when she turns him down. "But maybe next time."

"You know where to find me." 

John keeps following the doctor and makes a discovery when she stops at a parking garage to take photos with her own high powered lens. Across the way, it's our rapist in his big stupid apartment. She's clever, zooming in to watch him punch in his security code. Now she has a way in too.

"Finch..." John says, stunned. "Benton's not stalking the doctor. She's stalking _him_."

We're back to the call from the beginning. A tired, sad woman speaks slowly, leaving a message. "It's me. I know it's late. It was my fault. I know that now. I tried to put it out of my head, but I... I can't."

Our pal Fusco's out in a park, gets brushed by a jogger and immediately reaches for his gun. He's jumpy. But not jumpy enough because he still gets John sneaking up on him.

"Easy there, Lionel. Last time you pointed a gun at me, it didn't end in your favor, now did it?"

Fusco's five minutes from a heart attack. "You shouldn't sneak up like that, with the thugs from the Toreros cartel after me."

John's impressed. "Torero's from Sinaloa? I spent a little time in Mexico." Yeah, he did, a number of times.

"You know that they're a death squad. Cross them and your head winds up in a bag."

John leans in to whisper from behind. "But you've already crossed them." He doesn't have time for this anyway. "Andrew Benton's expunged record. Do you have it?"

"Even an added bonus, I got the M.E. report."

"Wonderful."

Fusco's livid. "I do a lot of things for you. You want me to keep doing them, you gotta protect me. You gotta take these guys out."

John sighs. "So I'm working for you now?"

"It's either them or me."

"Lots of crooked cops in this town, Lionel. It's not gonna be hard to find another one just as useful as you... with less baggage." Fusco knows he's right. He's dug himself the deepest hole. Reese holds out his hand. "The report, please. I did say please." He hands it over. "That's the spirit."

And he's gone, walking away. Fusco is left wondering how he's going to survive the next few days.

At the library, John's worked it out. "Finch, I know why the doctor's been stalking Benton." Their rapist sexually assaulted a freshman girl at NYU at a frat party. Finch listens to all this completely still, sickened.

"She said in her statement that she wanted to impress him. He... He was popular, a star athlete. So she had a couple beers with him, claimed he slipped something in her drink."

Finch is grim. "Why wasn't he arrested?" Oh, Harold. Don't you know? There's no justice for girls like these.

But John understands. "She waited two days to report the assault. Probably ashamed, scared." Finch just watches him explain this. They're disgusted that this is reality. "Tox reports came back clean, rape kit was inconclusive. She dropped the charges."

"Who was the girl?"

"Gabrielle Tillman, the doctor's sister." Oh god. Finch reads the M.E. report he's handed like it's going to give him anything other than more horror. "A year after the attack, Gabrielle was rushed to the E.R. and pronounced D.O.A. from an overdose of antidepressants and sleeping pills."

Finch really doesn't spend much time with women. He's surprised by this, but it all happens everyday. "This isn't an accidental overdose. This is..." And finally he understands. "She committed suicide."

"And that's why the machine gave us Tillman's number. She's going to murder Benton."

"The man responsible for her sister's death." Finch tapes poor Gabrielle's picture from the hospital up on the glass.

"Finch, she's a doctor who saves lives. She doesn't know what it's like to take one. It'll destroy her."

Carter knocks on the door of a pretty nice looking stone building, flowers out front. The door is old, though, green paint starting to peel at the edges. It's meant to look worn, not too expensive. Finch peeks out at her from behind the slide lock.

"Mr. Burdett? Detective Carter. I called regarding the robbery you witnessed?" He's wearing his old round glasses. They make him look less clever, more timid. Again, as with everything he does, it is deliberate. "Uh, can I come in?"

He smiles, lets her in. "I've been expecting you." And that's just about the last true thing he'll say all day.

Nice place this Harold keeps. "Sorry about the mess," he says but we can't see anything other than a few open books and a few more piled about. Like almost all versions of him, this one is a bookworm.

She's scanning around, trying to get a bead on this guy. "Paralegal, right? At lockup looking into a case?"

He's busy moving the books and newspapers around. He's dressed as unassumingly as possible. Plaid button down shirt over a t-shirt with a gray cardigan, tan slacks. None of his usual shine. 

He goes into the mind-numbing spiel. "Probate court failed to require a fidelity bond of the executor. The executor in his turn, robbed the Ulman estate blind." ZZZZZZ

He fluffs a pillow on a leather chair, pats it. "Please sit."

She notices him limping as he shuffles around busily. "Were you injured during the robbery?"

He looks at her with his sharp eyes. "Don't worry, I'm not going to sue the city. This is an old injury." He sits on the couch across from her. " _Although_ the stress of the situation did not help."

"We're doing everything in our power to catch these guys." She sure is. "Mr. Burdett, do you mind walking me through what happened?"

He sits back, does that looking up thing people do when they're remembering. "I was standing at the counter at lockup. They came storming in, they had _guns_... They were shouting at us to get down on the floor, so... I did."

"During the robbery, did you hear any of the men say the name Elias?" And that does catch him. He's been wondering about this Elias too.

"I don't believe so. Who's Elias?" He couldn't get so lucky, right? But no, he gets nothing.

"Did you get a look at any of their faces?" 

"No."

"Did any of the men talk to you?"

"Not that I recall." Now here's where he should have known he'd be on camera. Bad job, Finch. Why not tell her one of them hassled him and it was terrifying?

And now she's got him where she wants him. "Because it looks to me... like this man said something to you." And she passes over the still from the cam footage. Reese, holding Finch. Finch's hand on him, his mouth open by his ear.

He knows he's busted. But he's got more cleverness than just this.

"Ohhh, I was hoping I wouldn't have to go through all of this again. Yes. He told me to stop staring at him."

"That's interesting." She's in full predator cop mode. "Most people's instinct is to look away."

"Well, I've never been accused of being like most people." And there's one more nugget of honesty.

"Did he say anything else to you?"

"No."

"Did you try to communicate with him in any other way?"

"How do you mean?"

She holds up the photo again. "When he was holding you by your jacket."

"I asked him to let me go."

"And that's all you said."

"Detective Carter, I suppose you're used to being around guns. I suppose scenes of violence are commonplace for you, but I can assure you that for me, it was _terrifying_." A little more effective honesty. For good reason, he was legitimately scared in those moments, cowering and covering his ears at the gunfire. "I was so terrified, I couldn't even look away. So when he picked me up, I thought surely I was about to die. So yes, I was communicating with him. I was begging for my life." He looks up at her as she's standing now. "I'm sorry I can't remember the exact words I used."

Carter concedes this fight but not the war. "Well." She hands over her card. "If you can think of anything else, please give me a call. I promise you," she says, looking fiercely at him, threatening him with a plain statement. "We _will_ catch this guy." He nods, knowing she's not going to give this up.

Reese is out on the street, watching what looks to be some guy in an SUV picking up a prostitute for the evening. 

"Where's Dr. Tillman, Mr. Reese?"

"She's working. I'm taking care of a little side project." He grabs some pics for posterity. "What's got you worried, Harold?" He can tell something's up with him.

"Detective Carter. I met with her about the robbery. I had to know what she knows. She's... motivated. Some might say _fixated_. It won't be long before she catches up to you. Gonna have to have a plan when she does..." Finch warns.

"I'm taking care of it." More pics. "I'm making a new friend on the police force. He's going to help us with our problem with Carter and Fusco."

But regular duty calls. The doctor is waiting.

John walks into a support group. A woman is talking about being drugged and raped. Dr. Tillman watches her, feels every bit of her story. The woman felt she had no options. She was scared and without hope or help. Ugh, the guy was a co-worker. She still works with him, needs the work. It's too much for the doctor. She has to get some coffee and some sort of break. John follows.

He is good at getting people to talk, as charming and handsome as he is. 

"You know, I keep coming to these things, hoping I'll feel better," he says, "but they only make me feel worse."

"This coffee's terrible." She laughs a little with him. They've made a connection. He's good at that. The doctor admits she doesn't know the woman talking, but, "I know someone like her." Reese looks sad, sympathetic. He knows everything about her pain and carries it with him. "What about you?" she asks. "Why are you here?"

"I lost someone very close to me. Not a day goes by I don't think about what I could have done." His voice is unsteady as he looks into the distance and the past, seeing his failure again and again. This wound will never close for him. This is no cover story, only his own.

"It took me years," she says, "to piece together what happened to... my friend. You know, I thought I could... live with it. I put it behind me, I had a good job, a good life. And then I saw him, a month ago." 

Reese wishes with all his heart he could take this pain from her. "And it all came back."

"He was... eating dinner at this little French place in my neighborhood. He was out on a _date_. He looked content. My world is shattered, and he looks content." She clears her throat, realizing she's letting all of this out on a stranger. "Sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

"Hey, everybody needs someone to talk to." He smiles, reaches out a hand. "I'm John."

"I'm Kate." And he's disappointed. She's under her alias here. She's still hiding.

They're back at the library, looking again at all the pictures, one atop another on every one of Finch's monitors.

"The photos are some kind of sick trophies of his victims." Reese is sitting, hands folded under his arms, holding himself in his disgust and anger. He looks up at Finch, standing behind him, now back in his dress suit perfection and right angled glasses, holding his chair for stability. He doesn't know what to say about something this grotesque. "Benton convinces these women to do coke with him, slips them a sedative, then rapes them." John looks up again, like a son looking to a father for answers about why the universe could be so cruel. "In the morning, they're too afraid to come forward and implicate themselves."

Finch is all practicality, his way of distancing himself from emotions like these. "I suppose that explains why the charges against him are consistently dropped."

John just shakes his head, drops a heavy breath. "The guy's depraved... gets off on violating and humiliating all these women. He's not gonna stop, Finch." He knows. "Did you get a hit on that name the doctor gave me?"

Her pseudonym has three hits. Only one is plausible. A P.O. box a block from Tillman's hospital. "She recently signed rental agreements for a van and a vacation home in Montauk."

John's there. It's a beautiful white sunny place out by the water. Inside, something catches his eye. He opens a pantry door and stops cold. Inside, it's jars upon jars of all the same stuff.

"You find the house?" Finch asks. He's standing in front of the glass, looking at the pictures again. Pictures of Gabrielle. Pictures of bruises.

"And then some. Doctor has everything she needs to erase Benton for good."

Finch drops the picture. "What do you mean erase?"

"Eight pounds of lye heated to 300 degrees... body will dissolve in three hours.... _Give or take_."

"I will refrain from asking how you know that."

"Oh, Finch, she's meticulous. Planned everything to a T. And she's gonna get away with it."

"I'm beginning to wonder if she's not doing the world a favor." It takes a lot to get Harold Finch to think someone may not deserve to live. But it can be done. He's there.

"But Tillman isn't a killer. She goes through with it, it'll ruin her life." She would say her life is already ruined.

"What do you suggest, Mr. Reese?"

"We don't give her the chance. I'm gonna find a way to make Benton disappear."

Finch doesn't argue. The man is a monster, and he's theirs to stop.

We go to Fusco, taking a breath somewhere, trying to steady, ready himself. He's about to raid the cartel. John steps up behind him in a black leather jacket. "Decided to help me? I'm not so easy to replace, huh? I'm warning you, these cartel guys will put two in your back, so don't leave any of them standing." Oh, he won't, he never does. John just reaches out and puts his arm around Fusco, walking them both forward. 

Fusco keeps talking. "You need me here? You sure you don't want me to go around back and cover the exits?"

"No, you're good right here." He knocks on the door, shoves Fusco's face right up to the peephole.

"Detective?" the cartel guy calls from inside. "You got our money?" Fusco holds up a silver case. Cartel guy readies a gun.

And as they scream about a goal on TV at the futbol match they're watching, Reese pops in as soon as the door opens and starts busting heads, in most cases literally, and in some cases, with the case. 

This isn't what Fusco wanted at all. "You're supposed to take them out." But John's only here for the coke. He's got framing to do. "Hey... what are you doing? You stealing from them?"

"If it makes you feel better, it's for a good cause." And he's out of there.

Benton's at a stoplight. Reese walks up, taps on the window. "Sir? Pardon me."

Andrew rolls down the window. "What's the problem?" The problem is that he just got his teeth knocked out. He slumps over to the side, out like a light.

"No problem," Reese says, and he proceeds to coat Benton in a layer of cocaine.

When the rapist wakes, he's passed out over his steering wheel with the airbag deployed. The car horn is blaring, the front glass cracked all the way through. The car's smashed into a lamppost right in front of a police station. The cops come up, shine their lights in. He's groggy, but not too groggy to see the multiple dealer's packages of cocaine in his passenger seat.

But the next thing we see is him walking out of the station with a phalanx of suits. Money always gets itself off clean. 

Reese is just beyond furious in the back of Fusco's car, watching. "He's being released. Why?"

"Look at the guy," Fusco says. "He's got four lawyers, each of them got a suit on that costs more than I make in six months. The kind of lawyers that know every loophole a piece of garbage like Benton can crawl through." Fusco's up to speed on the kind of person they're after.

"What about the Toreros?" Fusco's still worried, for good reason. Nothing has been resolved. "They're gonna come looking for me _and_ their coke."

"Well, we better make sure they don't find you, Lionel." 

"You know what kind of hole you got me into?" Oh, you dug this one, buddy. John just pushed you down further into it. "What's stopping me right now from making some noise, getting you arrested?"

John shakes his head. "I don't know. What's stopping you?" Everything. He gets out. Fusco is frustrated.

God, it's the message from Gabrielle again. Poor doctor must hear this in her mind all the time. She's listening to it again on an old answering machine. She kept it, the last piece of her sister she has. We get to the part we haven't heard yet. "I'm sorry, Meg. I should have been a better sister." It's just crushing. The doctor is packing a bag. She's going to finish this for the sister she lost. "Please... just forget I called. Forget all this." She never will. Megan looks at a picture, her reason. Gabrielle smiling in the sunshine, happier days long gone.

Finch gets on the line. "Reese, Dr. Tillman's on the move."

"I thought she was in the middle of a shift." 

"She was. She went to take a nap and told the nurse not to wake her." He's standing, trying to do what he can, tracking her on the GPS map. "Now she's moving away from the hospital."

"I'm on it."

"Whatever you do, do it quick, she's headed toward Benton's loft."

John's got Benton in his sights now and he's about to make his move but... oops, it's the cartel guys again, now bruised and bandaged up. 

"Can we do this later, fellas? I'm a little bus–" And he gets cudgeled from behind and slumps forward. They drag him off with a guy with his arm in a sling.

Benton's at his loft, he opens the door. Or tries to, but his security code won't work. He gets inside, flicks on the light, walks through, suspicious. But not suspicious enough, because the doctor is waiting for him in the shadows, her hair up in a ponytail and under a ballcap. She's there to work.

She steps up and tases him to the ground. She's got gloves on, she's ready. She rolls him over, sprays something sedating up his nose. He's out and so she drags him to a wheelchair and straps him in. A blanket covers his lap and the restraints, and an oxygen mask covers his face. She had a detailed plan.

Finch knows something terrible is happening. "Reese, the doctor's been at Benton's loft for five minutes. Where the _hell_ are you?"

Where the hell he is under a hood at the cartel guys' place as a hostage. They unhood him, and when he's done blinking to adjust his eyes, he smiles at the head cartel guy. And who else is there but Fusco. Of course.

"Nice to see you again, Lionel," John says. Fusco clearly feels a little guilty about this, but he was going to kill Reese himself just a few weeks ago.

"Detective Fusco owes us a debt. So he made a little down payment... you."

"It's a win-win," he says, echoing Cartel Guy's words.

A nod from Cartel Guy and his muscle clocks Reese in the face. And again.

Meanwhile, the doctor is rolling Benton out to his destiny, starting with her rented van. She slides the door shut, and step one is done.

She's driving in the rain, looking back, checking to see he's still there, still unconscious. 

At the cartel's place, John is being beaten. They knock him out of his chair and onto the ground. He's bleeding, his hands are ziptied. "Where's our cocaine?" 

John breathes, then looks the cartel guy down. "I know you."

"Then you know if you cross the Torero cartel, you lose your head." He's got the garotte wire ready.

"I'm sorry..." Reese says, whispering, sounding weak.

"It's too late to apologize, amigo."

From the ground and sideways, John shakes his head. "No... I'm sorry... but you're gonna lose your head..." and he continues in Spanish, "when your boss finds out you've been helping your rivals in the Gulf cartel slaughter your boss' men... And his son." Uh oh.

"Is this true?" asks the guy with the bandaged nose.

"Shut up." Cartel Guy gets up to handle this and Reese is already working on the ground to get himself free.

"How does he know about Miguel?"

"Shut up, he's lying." 

Fusco's watching all this, stunned. He hasn't seen Reese in action yet, not up close and personal. Well, it's time for him to buckle up, because John's gotten to his feet. Even with his hands tied, nobody is a match for him. Three on one is nothing. Fusco cannot fucking believe what he just watched. Who IS this guy?

John grabs the shiny silver gun off the floor, continues in Spanish to Cartel Guy who is just conscious on the ground. "If I see you again, you're going to lose your head."

John steps up to Fusco. His face is bleeding, his hair's a bit mussed, but he's gotten it done. _You want to try me?_ Fusco knows he's screwed. 

"Look, it was nothing personal, all right? I had no choice. They were going to kill me."

Reese reaches into Fusco's coat pocket for his pocketknife and opens it right next to his face, gesturing with it. "I told you, you're not the only dirty cop in town." He starts cutting himself free. "I called in a favor. It's time for a change of scenery. You're going to be doing something else for me. And Lionel..." He holds up the knife, now folded shut, and slips it back into his pocket. "Don't do this again."

John walks out and Fusco's just standing there, mouth agape.

The doctor is at a diner gas station in the middle of nowhere. She walks in, there's a cop at the counter, doing some paperwork over coffee. She smiles at him and pays for her gas with the clerk. When she turns her back, a figure steps in front of her, tall and imposing.

"I thought that was you. Remember me?" John's smiling.

"Oh! The guy from the support group. Yeah..." She can't get out of this conversation fast enough. "Well, I gotta go." She moves toward the door, but he steps with her.

"Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Megan." And her face falls completely. That's not the name she gave him. He _knows_. "Come on, I hear it's terrible," he says, giving her own chitchat words back to her. When she doesn't move, he leans in to play a stronger card. "The guy you've got tied up in the back of the van can wait." She's confused. The cop's right there. If he was going to turn her in, why isn't he doing it? What is this guy doing? Who even is he?

Her hands are shaking terribly with the coffee cup, and it rattles against the saucer. She gives up, holds them in a ball next to her face. Reese is watching with such empathy in his eyes.

"You're smart. And you've been careful." t took an all-knowing machine to find her out. "You probably wouldn't get caught. But the truth is, you'll never really get away with it." His voice is a whisper. He tilts his head, trying to reach her.

"Do you know who he is... what he's done?"

"I know all about Andrew Benton. I know all about you, Megan. I know you're a damn good doctor." Tears well in her eyes, about to spill over. "I know that you've spent years of your life healing people." She looks away, and he leans in over the table. "And I know if you do this... if you murder this man in cold blood... it will _kill_ you." It killed him.

"You told me that you lost someone," she says. He presses his lips together. "Was that true?" He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. "How can you sit there and tell me not to do something you know in your heart you would do too?"

"Because unlike you... I know what happens when you take a life." It is the weight that never lifts, the hollow in your soul that can never be filled. It is forever. It cannot be undone. "You lose a part of yourself. Not everything. Just the part that matters the most." Oh, sweet Reese. He can barely get these words out. It is agony for him. 

"Is that what happened to you?"

He looks away to keep the tears in, blows out a long slow breath to hold his control. He's only just able. 

"You don't have to do this. You can turn around _right now_." He's begging her. _Don't follow my path. Don't do this to yourself as I did to myself._

She shakes her head. "He's seen me. He's seen my face."

"Well, suppose I have a little talk with him." This is the one thing John can still do. As broken as he is, he still has violence to offer as penance. "Trust me. It won't matter."

She's crying now, her hands bound together in almost a prayer. 

"Give me the keys to your van, Megan." He bows his head. It's so much, her pain and his. His hands reach out across the table, one turned over open, waiting, hoping. 

"Everything he's done, and I'm supposed to just hand you over the keys? He gets to walk free? What do I get?"

"You get a second chance. You get to let go. You get your life back."

She shakes her head again. "What does Gabrielle get?"

"She gets to keep her memory of you."

Oh god. And Megan doesn't know what to think, what to do, what to feel. It's so much. Too much. She drops her face into her hands. "I don't get it. Who are you? Why are you here?"

"I already told you. Everybody needs someone to talk to."

She breathes and sniffs back tears. Then she reaches down into her pocket. Reese's hand is still open, still waiting. She can't bear to look. She keeps her face buried in one hand, while the other slowly drops the keys down into Reese's fingers. 

He closes his hand on hers a moment, holding it, holding her. "Thank you."

Not long after, Finch calls in softly. "Reese? Where's Dr. Tillman?" Did he listen to their conversation? 

"She's fine. I have her van..." Inside that van, that hopeless hollow is back in Reese's eyes. Now he will do what he does best, the thing that sickens him the most. "...and Benton."

Finch looks up, knowing what is surely coming, fearing it. "What are you going to do with him?"

"We're gonna have a little talk." 

But Reese has his own question too. Something he needs to know. "Why do you do it, Finch? The machine, the numbers, all of it?"

Finch stands in front of his list. Dozens and dozens of numbers. Hundreds. All the faces, clippings, notes, records, names. He stands in front of it, his life's work, written out in the deaths of others. 

"I told you, Mr. Reese..." And for a moment, he pauses, blinks. He almost opens himself, considers it, and tosses it back away as impossible. He's not well. He was honest earlier. The stress has taken a toll on him. Years of it. "I have my reasons." He barely makes it through the words. Those reasons haunt him, emotionally and physically. A spasm of pain hits him, a mixture of grief and loss and severe bone damage. 

It should have killed him. 

It keeps killing him. 

It will never stop killing him. 

He slams his eyes shut to let the wave pass, and stumbles a step back, unsteady, alone. 

And he uses his practicality to push past all the feelings he can't bear to touch, as he always does. He changes the subject.

"And our little problem with Detective Carter?"

"Taken care of." John drives off into the night, blank.

At the police station, Fusco's getting a new assignment.

"Captain, it's a real pleasure–"

"Save it. I was told to assign you to this desk and not ask questions. So this is me not asking questions." He holds up a phone. "And this is you calling your friend and telling him to lose the photos he's got of me. But if you mess up, I really don't care who's watching out for you. I will _personally_ see that your ass fries." Does Fusco have a history with this captain? Or is it just the blackmail? "Have a great day, Detective."

Fusco's got a picture of Lee on his desk. Carter strolls up. Her desk is across from his now. "Cute kid."

"Thanks." He sees her looking at photos of Finch in a folder, but of course, he doesn't know who Finch is yet. "What's that, the Center Street lockup robbery? That was something. Any leads?"

"A few. You just transfer?"

"Yeah. Detective Fusco."

"Carter." They shake hands. He leans in.

"Looks like you're stuck with me." They're stuck with each other. She smiles. This will ultimately be very good for both of them.

At the sunny vacation house by the water, Benton's waking up. He looks out at the ocean, rubs his head. Still groggy, he hasn't noticed yet he's sitting at a table, Reese across from him, straight and still. A pistol sits between them.

"Where am I?" Reese says nothing. "That woman in my loft– she... _tased_ me."

Reese looks away, imagining it, imagining worse. "Don't worry. I told her to leave." Benton finally looks up. "She isn't cut out for this." He sees the gun. "She fixes people. Not like us. We break 'em." John doesn't fix people, but he does help them. With his partner, he helps so many now. If only he could actually absorb it. To compare himself to a sociopath rapist is crushing. He is nothing like Benton. He was always trying to help, even when he was misled. Benton never was.

And Benton's starting to realize how bad the situation he's in really is. "I don't understand, um... Who are you?" But Reese gives him nothing but a hateful stare. "What are you gonna do to me?"

"Honestly, I haven't decided yet. Let me ask you a question. Do you think people ever really change? I mean you– you hurt innocent people, and I... well... for a long time I _killed_ people like you."

Benton puts his hands up on the table. Reese's are down below, folded, waiting. "Please. I'm not who you think I am. This is a mistake." That's not going to work here. John _knows_. 

And finally John brings his arms up to the table, frames his hands around the gun.

"Wait– wait, oh... okay." His hands are just inches away from the pistol, ready. How many people has this gun killed? How many people has this man killed? Benton decides denial is not going to save him here. "I've done some things. Um... I've _crossed_ some lines." Crossed? He's destroyed dozens upon dozens of lives for his own pleasure. "But I won't do it again! I.. I swear." Reese is implacable. "Please... let me go."

And Reese pulls his hands back toward himself in fists. "I could let you go. 'Cause you know for the rest of your life that I'd be watching you. And if you hurt _anybody_... I'd stop you." Stop. Yes, that's one way of putting it. 

"Maybe you could change. And maybe so could I." He almost has half a smile on his face imagining this utopian world where people heal, where they advance, where hope still remains and grows. And then he shakes his head. "But the truth is... people don't really change, do they?"

Benton won't stop shaking his head. And sweating. "No, they uh... they can. _I_ can. And um... _you_..." Reese looks at him. He doesn't believe he can change. He knows he can't change. Whether he's correct in that assessment or not is another question. "I... I don't think that you're going to... kill me."

"No?"

"No, because..." and he's talking with his hands, holding them out, pleading. "I can see inside that you're a... a good person. You're a good man." Reese is almost amused by this pathetic attempt to flatter him. 

"Good?" He laughs miserably. "I lost that part of myself a long time ago." He looks down, remembering a time when he wasn't this way. He can still remember, but it's so far away. "Not... sure if I can find it. Not sure it matters anymore." He turns back to look at Benton. "Maybe it's better this way." Benton's desperate, can't shake his head enough. "Maybe it's up to me to do what the good people can't. Or maybe there are no good people. Maybe there are only good decisions."

Benton knows it's almost over. "Please... you, you, you don't want to do something that you're gonna regret."

Reese stares into him. "Which do you think I'll regret more, letting you live or letting you die?" He puts his hands back framing the gun. "Andrew... help me make a good decision."

And we never see what that good decision is.

* * *

#### Thoughts

  * They could have kept Megan Tillman as a character. She would have been a great occasional for the team with her medical knowledge and general cunning. But ultimately it is better this way. They gave her her life back and now she is free. If John and Harold are anything, it is not free.
  * "I told you." Reese and Finch say the same thing here. Everybody needs someone to talk to. They have each other, and yet, no, they don't.
  * Take care of yourself is the name of the episode, but they all need help, need others.
  * What Kara did to Reese in twisting him into a killing machine is akin to rape in a way, an act of power that robbed him of his self worth, his belief in safety and himself.
  * Does John kill Benton? It's possible he dumps him in Mexico, it's possible he dumps him in a tub full of lye. But I don't think he just lets him go free in any case. Reese doesn't believe in redemption at this point, and besides, this isn't just someone making a mistake or a wrong turn. This man is a sociopath. He literally cannot stop. It is in him, it IS him. His pleasure and self worth are constructed solely out of cruelty to others. Even if he tried to change, it wouldn't stick. He'd get away from this moment and every day that passed he'd be freer of it. Eventually, he'd be in a moment of high desire and he'd just let it happen again. And then it would be over, the seal broken.
  * This is two episodes straight of Reese begging people not to become the person he is today. He saved them both.




	6. POI 1x05 - Judgment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese and Finch save the kidnapped son of a judge, John gets shot for the first of many, many times, and a friendship slowly begins to flower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive some criticism of the somewhat incoherent plot in this one, as well as some moderate thirsting after Reese. I simply couldn't resist.

### POI 1x05 - Judgment

#### Landmarks:

  * John thanks Finch for the first time for giving him this job and this purpose
  * In return, Finch voluntarily gives John a little information about himself for the first time, their first real connection as people, as friends
  * Fusco is actively helpful to both Reese and Carter and earns a little trust from both
  * John pointlessly cocking his gun in the library count: 1



#### Injuries:

  * **Reese**
    * Close range gunshot wound to the shoulder (graze?)
      * John GSW count: 1



* * *

We start out with a guy getting run down in a parking garage. And some Eastern European accent guy saying, "We've got a problem."

At a diner, Finch is having breakfast in a booth when Reese walks up. He's nibbling on toast.

"What's good here?" John asks.

"That won't work, Mr. Reese."

"What won't?" He tries to look casual, but Finch is of course right on him.

"Your interrogation technique."

"What's good here?" Apparently toast and orange juice as that's what we can see on the table. "It's an innocent question."

"No question is ever innocent from you." Ouch. That hurts, Harold. As he would say, words wound. "You're trying to determine whether I come here often. Armed with that knowledge, you'll try to figure out where I live." Finch is just as broken as Reese in a different way. A ten foot pole isn't far enough for him to keep everybody away from him and anything to do with him. He wants to live on an island alone, but he can't, so it's a constant struggle to push everyone away and conceal himself.

"You're paranoid, Finch."

"With good reason." Side eye for that one. He knows he's right. He gets his money out to leave a tip.

"Maybe I just don't know what's good here. So I'm asking the regular." Yeah, but that's the problem, that makes him the regular. Harold doesn't want to be known as the regular with anything ever.

He hands over a menu and taps it. We can see the book he's been reading. It's a hardcover of Sinclair Lewis' _It Can't Happen Here_ , carefully wrapped in cellophane to protect the jacket, a first edition, perhaps. A story of American fascism. Even more appropriate now than it was when this aired.

"Enjoy your meal, Mr. Reese." Reese really would like to know more about Finch as a person and not a puzzle box, but the puzzle box is all Harold offers him, so that's what he works with.

Finch walks away and John watches him go with a smile. Their game continues. He opens the menu. There's a photo of a bearded man.

It's Samuel Gates, criminal court judge, dad, and widower.

"So the son is all he has left." John immediately sympathizes. He knows the fear of being utterly alone. 

Gates has a nanny, and she's a good surrogate mom for the boy. They see him off onto the school bus. 

"Lost the woman he loved. Probably threw himself into his work to cope." John knows that particular hell better than anyone. 

The judge is tough, by the book, "waging a one-man war on crime". He doesn't work by the book, but tough one-man war on crime is John's entire existence now. 

"Everyone has enemies," Finch says. "The Machine identifies malice and an intent to harm. We need to determine which threat it saw, which one is real."

John wires up the court and the guy's house with cameras, copies off his computer files, rifles through papers. He keeps a folder of death threats. Later, he's watching the judge munch on fries at a diner.

"Mr. Reese, any sign of a threat?"

"Does cholesterol count?"

Finch is working on the letters, but Reese is on some crew cut dudes looking sketchy outside. He reaches for the gun at his back, when one crew cut makes a move, but the man pulls out a cell phone instead of a pistol. But he also leaves something in the trash can, conspicuously at the top. It's the phone. Text says "Court in session, good to go." The next one is "School's out, moving in."

"Finch, what's the son's name again?"

"Samuel Gates, Jr.," he says as he works on filling up the glass with pictures and notes. "Why?"

"I think we've been following the wrong Sam Gates." They're following the number, not the name. John's still getting used to what all this means.

The son gets home from school with his football, but instead of his nanny, there are goons there who wrap him in a blanket and stuff him in a car. 

John appears and fists start flying. He breaks the car window with a man's skull, and is winning against #2, but that guy pulls out a silenced pistol. He shoots point blank and Reese falls to the wet, leaf covered curb.

The men get away with the boy, their tires squealing. Reese opens his eyes and pushes himself up, furious at them, furious that he failed. 

Back at the library not long after, John's done patching his own shoulder up, which is... a thing. Seems like getting shot at close range would be more of a problem, but he brushes it off like it was a bee sting, barely taking his shirt off enough to get to the wound and put some gauze and tape on it. He walks out, talking to Finch, still actively working all the while. His shirt hangs open as he's rebuttoning it. Reese is muscular and sculpted but still fleshy, just soft enough. He has the finest salt and pepper hair on his chest, just visible against his skin.

"I can't be there on time if I'm getting bad information." That was one of Finch's promises, the chance to be there on time. Today it didn't happen.

Finch is working too, walking up behind him, following him.

"The Machine did not send us the wrong number. If it says that Judge Gates is in danger, then he is." 

John is angry enough that he stops buttoning. "Well, tell that to his son." He tucks his still open shirt back into his pants as Finch theorizes with him, thinking and talking with his hands.

"The kidnapping must connect. It could be the first step in a larger plot that ends with the judge dead." Finch knows this is terrible. He can't stand to see kids hurt either. "We can put a stop to it, all of it, but we need a plan."

Now bandaged from his point blank gunshot wound and redressed, John reaches for his coat and his firearm. "I have a plan. Find Sam. The man just lost his wife. I won't let him wind up alone." 

And Reese cocks his gun in the air in the middle of the library like that makes any sense at all. He's nowhere near anything to use that gun on. It's terrible weapon protocol for someone ex-Special Forces. But this case is hitting all of his softest spots. The emotion and adrenaline are overwhelming his control. 

Behind him, Finch is worried this is getting out of hand. He should be. Of course, they both really should be more worried that Reese already got shot today, but we have more plot to develop instead.

Judge Dad is getting a call from his son and the kidnappers. They have cartoonish 1980's villain Russian accents. "No cops, no feds. Tell anyone, and he's dead." Well, good news. He doesn't have to tell anyone at all, they already know, and they're definitely not cops or feds.

They hang up on him and it goes straight to a dial tone. You can't even get a dial tone on a cellphone now, but anyway. He goes to call his son's line, nothing, then his nanny, also nothing. Panicking, he just sits on the courthouse steps. His briefcase tumbles down a few.

And then John sits beside him. He doesn't mess around with any preamble. There's no time. "Let's figure out how we get your son back."

"Who are you?" Excellent question.

"I'm here to help you." 

The judge tries to grab Reese by the lapels, but John's got his wrists instantly instead. "Where is Sam? Where is my son? You're with the kidnappers, aren't you? You're one of them." A very plausible theory.

"No. I tried to stop them. But the kidnappers made contact, that's good. That means they want to negotiate. They won't hurt your son as long as he's worth something." The judge's eyes are wild, trying to read this random lunatic in front of him holding his arms, trying to reason in his mind what's happening. His world has fractured in the last minute and a half.

"What do you mean, you tried to stop them? You were there?"

"I was." He's got the bullet wound to show for it. "But not soon enough."

"How did you know they were going to take him?" Well, you see... uh... "Who the hell are you?"

"You have two questions right now." John's face is right up in the judge's. "Who are you and where is my son? Which one do you want to focus on?" In the judge's shoes, I would never trust this guy. A random person showing up with all this knowledge just seconds after the first call from the kidnappers would have to be part of the scheme. 

The judge concedes to it as a bead of sweat runs down his forehead.

At the house, the place has clearly seen some violence. The kid's football is on the floor, chairs are turned over. 

"They were in my house. How did they get past the alarm?" John did earlier too, it's not that hard.

"I've tapped your phone and I'm setting up surveillance on your street," John says, little minicam in hand. "It's our best shot at IDing the kidnappers."

"Where's Christina?" Uh oh. The nanny. John wonders if she might be in on it, but the judge is certain she's not. She's been devoted and helped them through the wife's death.

The judge is in shock, holding his son's football and gym bag to himself on the edge of the couch. "I have about $300,000 in the bank. If this is about money, I can pay."

"Whatever this is about, I'm going to find your son. And I'm going to bring him home."

"They said no cops, no FBI."

John smiles a little, trying to be reassuring. "They didn't say anything about me."

Finch is working tech headquarters. He's got multiple audio streams, video, everything, feeding into his monitors.

"I want to save that boy as much as you do, but remember, Mr. Reese... We don't need a _judge_ asking questions about who we are and what we do."

"I can't work a kidnapping from arm's length. I'll worry about Gates once we get Sam back."

The computer screens are filled with information, analysis of every kind. He's trying to trace the call from the kidnappers, but it was VOIP, anonymous. Finch has already taken apart the cell phone Reese found. It was fairly fruitless, so now he's trying to hack an entire cell company to get what he needs. 

"But their firewall is impressive."

"You can't get in?" Reese is carving out a space in the wall, looking for something. "You built a machine that spies on the entire country."

Finch isn't taking that lying down. "When you work for the _government_ , access is not a problem." He drops his voice. "Things are different now. I'll figure it out."

"Well, figure it out quick. The kidnappers killed the nanny." Jesus. Maybe lead with the murder information, John? And why didn't the nanny's number come up? They killed her spur of the moment? What was their plan for her and what went wrong? Did they think the kid was coming home to an empty house?

At the police station, Fusco is looking for Carter. She's got the Elias evidence box and a pile of files on her desk. He does the worst job possible of not looking suspicious and rifles through the papers. He finds the pictures of homeless Reese on the subway. Carter's coming, so he puts it back and tries to go back to his desk like he was there all along. He puts his glasses on. He's reading, see? See?

Her top file is askew, and she doesn't leave things not at right angles. She knows he's been snooping.

"You came down from the 51st, right, Fusco?"

"The Bronx's finest."

"What brought you here?" Oh, you know, wanting to move up, needing new horizons, getting blackmailed by the vigilante I tried to murder and now work for on the side.

"I wanted a change of scenery."

"Wanted... or needed?"

They stare at each other.

"You got something you want to say?"

"I heard some rumors that got me concerned." He laughs, she shrugs. "Just like to know what I'm dealing with." She's dealing with a guy with conflicting loyalties.

His phone beeps and he reads it. "Carter, I'm going to buy you a coffee, since you've been so nice."

"Cream, no sugar," she calls at him as he walks away.

Fusco's in the line for the coffee cart outside when Reese sidles up behind him in his black leather jacket.

"Oh, he comes when he's called. Good. Now if I could just train him to stop trying to kill me." 

"How long am I gonna have to work down here? Commute's a bitch."

"You should be grateful. Takes some guys years to make task force. Plus... I let you live." There's no arguing with that. "Carter, is she getting close?"

"All I know right now is you pissed off real police, my friend. She's not going to stop til she got you. Is that it?"

Nope, not even close. Reese puts his hand on Fusco's shoulder, along with a tiny baggie with a bullet in it, the one he pulled from the wall at the judge's. "Ballistics. And find out if there's been any ransom kidnappings reported. White guys with crew cuts. One with long hair."

"Kidnapping's big news. I'da heard something."

"What about amber alerts?"

"Child abduction?" Fusco does care, especially about children, he's just been trained by evil people he felt loyal to not to. It's not too far off from Reese, in a way. "Is that what we're dealing with?"

"We? Huh. Since when are you on board?"

"It's still a missing kid. Hey, whatever else I've done, I'm still a cop. You need some help, you let me know." But Reese has already disappeared, as he's wont to do. Neither of them trust each other yet. And he is asking for Lionel's help with the ballistics and information. "You understand?" Not yet. He turns around to see no one there. 

Finch made it through the cell company's firewall because of course he did. It's pretty useless for ID. Phone was paid for in cash under an alias.

"But our kidnappers have to sleep somewhere. The location data puts this phone on the same block in Brooklyn every night."

"Then I'll hit him where he lives." And hit him in the face, but that goes without saying with John.

Sure enough, he finds a guy in a stairwell and throws him face first into a wall. The guy's still swinging, and they fight on a landing. John is winning of course, but the guy pulls a knife. John knocks it out of his hand quickly, but almost gets pushed over a rail. In the next second, though, he tosses the guy down the stairs. He rolls to a stop at the bottom, still.

"Finch?" Reese calls in, out of breath, rifling through the guy's wallet. "I just found our guy."

"Is he talking?"

"Not at the moment." Yeah, he's face down on the stairs, so no. But when he rips the man's shirt open he finds a tattoo on his chest he immediately recognizes.

"I know who has Sam, Finch. SP9. It's a nasty street gang from Eastern Europe."

"You dealt with them in your former employment?" I love that is how Harold describes being a CIA international spy and assassin. _Your former employment_ , like it was a job at Wendy's. 

"They were trading with the Pashtun warlords, guns for heroin. But they also run kidnappings in Warsaw." Reese is sitting on the stairs, still flushed and sweating, a fine layer on his chest glistening, matting the hair down. He's had a hard day, and it's not over. "Looks like they just opened up a new branch in New York." He takes the unconscious guy with him.

Carter's working the nanny's murder, of course. Another guy called her in. "I got your BOLO. White male, 6'2", graying temples, nice suit. Super said he saw him leaving at the time of the 911."

"Did you get audio on the call?"

"What audio? Nobody said boo. M.E. said she was dead two hours before. So, uh... you think your guy killed her?"

Carter's looking around. "No, I think he called 911." She knows he's looking into something. He finds trouble, and she's going to find him. The other detective is disappointed. He was hoping her guy was going to be it and it would be easy.

"So if your guy wasn't the shooter, what was he doing here?" Good question. Carter would like to know that too.

The police are at the judge's, asking about the dead nanny. He's stressed and distraught, but he's trying to cover and pretend nothing else is wrong. He's not doing a good job. 

"My son. I came home to be with him. He's upstairs playing right now." He's with my girlfriend. She's from Canada. You wouldn't know her.

Luckily this cop is oblivious and he just leaves. Reese is right by the door when the judge shuts it. He is grim, focused. The poor judge is just about to burst into tears. The nanny was his dear friend who helped him and his son through the worst time in their lives. And someone killed her so they could kidnap his boy. He stumbles into the room, stumbles through his words. John stands at the wall, arms folded, listening. 

"Christina was... um... she was, uh... with us the night that Elizabeth died." Reese takes a breath out of focus behind him. The loss of loved ones, especially women, he finds extremely hard to take. But he has to keep it together here because there's no time for him to be emotional. He has to work. 

"Hey," John says, in his gravel whisper. "He's alive, okay? As long as they need him, Sam's still alive." He's reassuring himself as much as the judge.

"You don't know that."

Reese steps forward. It's time to get to work. He asks about SP9. The judge snaps around to face him, his tears gone, turned to suspicion.

"What are you? An ex-cop? FBI?"

"I have experience in situations like this." He has experience on both sides, as a matter of fact. "That's all you need to know."

"Yeah? Well, maybe you're not enough." Hey, again the judge makes a pretty decent point. Reese has been pretty much useless to this moment. "Maybe I should call those officers back and tell them the truth."

"I know how to be invisible." He's talking fast, trying to convince him as he steps closer. "The police and the FBI don't. But I'm going after your son regardless." And he brings up SP9 again.

The judge doesn't know and asks who they are, but there's no time for that because the phone is ringing.

The man on the line asks if the judge is alone and he lies while Reese leans in close to overhear the conversation. He demands to talk to his son, and is given the chance but only for a moment.

"Your son is a good boy. Smart like you."

"How much? I'll pay anything you want."

"See? Smart." But they're not after money. They want to rig a court case. The People vs. Angela Markham, whoever that is.

"Angela Markham? She mowed down some guy in a parking garage. It's a simple hit and run." Clearly not. And John is on it.

We see the little boy, huddled up on a bed with blankets. There's religious statuary and things around. Are we in a church?

The judge is filling Reese in on the case. They're sitting back to back in booths at a bar, pretending they're not together. Woman in question works at a tech company, got drunk at a party, hit a CPA. Facing DWI and manslaughter. "Just a random accident." Yeah, maybe not. 

Judge wants to know what this has to do with his son, but John lays the truth on him. "I don't know. But it's not just Sam's life they're playing with. They're planning to kill you too."

"How can you know that? Where are you getting your information?" Uhhh, look, just trust me on this one, okay?

"Let's just say I have a source and it's never wrong." He uses Finch's words, having accepted the absolute reality of them. (Does no one ever change their minds? Wouldn't the Machine be sometimes wrong due to human fallibility if not her own?)

"If we're going to save your son, I need to find a way to hurt them." John knows his options are super limited at this point. The trial is about to resume. "Just stall," he tells the judge. "Make it look like you're cooperating. But buy me time."

Finch is doing some investigation online about SP9 as Reese paces behind him. His monitors reflect blue into his glasses. "Well, this isn't a street gang. This is a multinational corporation." They work in 18 countries in multiple continents. John says they got smarter after Interpol took down their predecessor mafia.

"They have almost no digital footprint," according to Finch, but of course, he found what little they do have. It's not enough. "I have yet to find anything that could help us find Gates' son."

John's theory is that this Angela is sleeping with some high up in the gang. He's off to look into the boyfriend. He slings his coat over his shoulder and his fitted shirt unbuttoned low.

Somewhere, Reese opens a trunk and the guy he threw down the stairs is in there now, with his mouth duct taped. He's trying to yell, but it's no use.

"The longest it's ever taken me to break someone is 16 hours." That's probably true. The guy tries to swear at him from behind the tape. "You don't look like you're going to set a record. Want to talk?" More swearing, so no. "You must like it in there." He closes the trunk again.

Fusco rolls up to Carter's desk.

"Caught a fresh one?"

"My guy in a suit led me to another case." 

Fusco picks up one of the pictures. "Shooter dug the slugs out, huh?" 

"Just the one, and I'm not so sure that was the shooter." There's your ballistics, Lionel. 

He gets a call. "It's my ex, I gotta take this." Yeah, sure. Carter's not really buying that crap, but she's busy. 

Fusco moves to the hallway. "You got a real creepy sense of timing, man."

"Ballistics report, Detective."

"Squat. Your slug's not in the system. And I'm pretty sure that Carter's working your crime scene." And then it comes back to where Fusco actually cares. You can hear it in his voice, usually so dismissive, but not here. "Hey, does this dead nanny have anything to do with the missing kid?"

"I'll call when I need something else."

"Hey, whoa whoa, you need all the help you can get right now." Fusco wants to feel like he's helping someone for real again. It's been so long. "I mean, if I can ID the nanny killer, it might help you with the kid. Am I wrong?"

Reese knows he isn't as much as he wishes that were not the case. There's resignation in his voice. "I'll give you a way to contact me. Keep me posted, and keep Carter out of my way." Easier said than done, pal.

Fusco rolls back to Carter. "So, whatta we got?" Now it's "we", just like with John.

"This is too clean," she says, looking up at him. She doesn't agree with going theory of romance gone bad. 

And hey, look, Fusco's actually useful for something! He has some kind of real skill after all! "Look at those circles on this entrance wound. How many pissed off boyfriends you know go out and buy a silencer?" She arches an eyebrow, impressed. "Romance, my ass. Your killer is a pro." 

She looks him up and down. She's going to have a partner in this after all. "Pull up a chair."

Finch is in the courtroom, cloning Angela's phone. 

Judge looks awful and he's not making this any easier on himself by bringing a picture of his kid to stare at.

Meanwhile, John's driving trunk guy around like a maniac in a construction site. Eventually, he stops again to check in with his passenger.

"Hey, Leon. How's the ride back there?" He pulls off the duct tape. Guy's much more amenable now. He holds up a white bag. "Now, you can have this juicy burger, or you can go for another spin. All you have to do is help me find a scared little boy."

Guy swears he doesn't know. Doesn't know this Angela either. "Look, I don't know why they wanted that kid."

"You don't know much, do you?"

"That's how they run it. They work in small teams, cells."

Then Reese wants all the names of his cell, but they're just street names. "There's four guys, that's all I know, now would you please just let me out of here?!"

"For no names and no info?" He goes to close the trunk again, but suddenly the guy has a brainwave. 

"I know a place. It's where I go to get paid." Yeah, that'll do. John drops the fast food bag on the guy's chest, but his hands are still bound. "How am I supposed to eat it?!" he screams as John closes the trunk again.

"You'll figure it out."

The trial is going, and the defense is asking for all these stupid objections and getting them. The prosecution is getting fed up. The judge takes a recess until the morning. 

When he's back at his desk, the kidnapper calls. He's disappointed. But the judge mentions he has to make it look plausible or all this will be for nothing. Kidnapper agrees but he's mad and sends a picture of the kid huddled on the bed and a gun on a nearby table pointed his way.

Which Finch immediately sees, of course. His hand is shaking a little holding the phone from a mixture of his injuries and his fear for the boy. He puts on a look of fierce determination and leaves to follow Angela. It's a struggle to keep up with her as she power walks down the sidewalk and he limps along.

"We're running out of time, Mr. Reese. Going through her contacts and emails even as we speak." How? Some automated system? Is he scrolling as he walks? But it doesn't matter because she just gets a call from the kidnapper.

She's mad that it isn't happening fast enough. Kidnapper doesn't like this whole thing. "It's bad for business. My clients are asking questions." She says it's not her problem but he mentions, "Our whole operation is in jeopardy because you had too many shots." _Our_ operation, is it? Interesting, Finch thinks. He has a way forward like Reese has that address.

It's night, and John is breaking into a brownstone basement. He's got his gun out but he's not watching his back enough because here comes the long haired guy who shot him earlier. He's all bandaged up from their last meeting too. This time he misses, but Reese doesn't. He holds the guy by the collar and his entrance wound. Long Hair yelps in pain.

"Where's the boy?"

"I don't know!" Then you're worthless. John just knocks him the hell out and moves forward.

He busts into a counting room. Piles and piles of money.

"Finch," he says, "Just found a way to make these guys hurt."

Kidnapper is pretty upset. This is going bad fast. "I am missing two men and _half a million dollars_. Someone is making a move against us!" You could say that. The little boy is still huddled, poor thing. "Contact the team! Change of plans!" In frustration, he throws the phone at the kid, who has to jump out of the way.

At the library, John dumps an entire garbage bag full of cash onto Finch's desk in front of him. Harold picks up one $100 bill, turns it over. "I guess we know why they didn't ask for money."

"I have six more just like it. Could be our bargaining chip to get Sam."

But Finch has bad news. "There may be _lots_ more where these came from." John looks down on him, confused. "Angela's not sleeping with our kidnapper. I think she's in business with him." Reese sits down next to Harold to understand what he's found. And probably also because he's been shot and in multiple fistfights and had no sleep in the space of two days or so.

"That tech company she works for? They make banking software, the kind that can _spot money laundering._ "

"And I just found a room full of small bills." He's putting it together. Finch adds more. Angela installed the software, and "she could turn that _whole system off_ with the click of a mouse."

Reese knows about old power, violence and brute force. But despite being older in age, Finch knows all about new power, finance and technology. There's a generational shift happening. They need the two bound together.

"Then SP9 uses one of the biggest banks in the world to clean its dirty money."

"They leave no digital footprint because this is how they pay for things. Cars, lawyers, safe houses. If we can access those accounts, we'll have more than a bargaining chip. We'll have a way to find Sam Junior."

Next morning, the judge has had enough of Reese's plan, but John grabs him by the collar to make sure he understands. "They'll kill you both as soon as they get what they want. Now I can save your son..." John's blue eyes are wide. "You just have to trust me." He's not sure if his argument did the trick.

The trial is a mess. Prosecution moves for a mistrial. Judge threatens her with contempt. "Trust me, Ms. Ramirez. You have no idea how far I'll go." She gives up. Prosecution rests.

Finch is on a mission at the bank server room in his tech guy white shirt and round glasses. Another guy comes in and is immediately suspicious. "It's confidential."

"Not anymore, we just got hacked."

"What?! How did they get past the firewall?" He just walked in and bypassed it, fool.

Finch doesn't look up, typing away. "I'm working here."

"What's your name? Who are you?" They get that a lot. He's got a great comeback for it this time. 

"Considering that they called me when your system was compromised..." He looks up for emphasis. "I'd say I'm the guy who just took your job." Snappy Finch is the best Finch.

Meanwhile in Reese's trunk, tattoo guy has been joined by Mr. Long Hair. John wakes them up with a shower from his water bottle. 

"A hospital would be nice about now." Yeah, Long Hair is shot, although so is Reese and that seems to not matter at all. "Where's the boy?"

Hair says he doesn't know. "How 'bout your boss' name, you know that yet?"

"I've got a family. You going to kill them too?" In his prior life, they might have made him. He doesn't do that kind of thing anymore. "Because _he will_."

"You ever see two cats in a bag?" Reese asks. "You want out?" He cuts Tattoo's hands free. "Get your boss' name." Tattoo immediately goes to work on Hair and John shuts the trunk.

Fusco's working the nanny case. "Carter. Come here, I think I got something." He's got surveillance video. She leans in. "Look at this. White guy, long hair, pulling off gloves. He could be our killer."

"Or just a guy with cold hands. What makes you so sure Mr. Long Hair is our man?" Oh, yeah, Fusco, you forgot. John gave you that information and Carter doesn't know anything about this yet. He frowns, knows he screwed up. "You get a description I don't know about?" You could say that.

"I got a hunch." Hell of a hunch. He ran the plate and got a company, and Carter's at least willing to go check that out. Fusco hurries to take out his phone and get to texting.

Back at the construction site, Tattoo is finally eating that burger with a ravenous hunger. John's on the phone. "Finch, got a name for you. Jarek Koska. Word is, he's the boss."

"Well, if he is, he's careful about it, no accounts in his name." Finch is back from his excursion, and back in his suited perfection. "This operation is _massive_." He's impressed with the work. It's huge and clever. "Every morning at 5 am, Angela shuts down OneState's software for three minutes. Millions of dollars flow in undetected. SP9's not just laundering their own money. They have hundreds of clients. All criminal themselves, I'm sure. If Koska's using a shell corporation, it could take hours to find it."

Oh, hey! Fusco's actually come through with real help for Reese! It's a text with that company he's tracking with Carter. Yay, Lionel, getting his shit together!

"Finch? Try Coldfield."

"Definitely a large account. Looks like the money's being used to buy... boats, planes, real estate." It is wonderful to watch Finch think and process, use his mastery. "Most of it right here in New York."

"That's them. Get a list. The place they're holding Sam will be on it." Fusco really is going to have a major hand in saving this kid. It's a huge step forward for him and for Reese's trust in him.

Finch has an address, close to the judge's house and purchased just before the trial. John thinks if he can find Sam, the judge won't have to throw the trial. (although the trial is 100% shot at this point anyway, but...)

"Well, you'd better move fast," Finch says, watching his CC cam of the court. "I think Angela's jury just reached a verdict." Uh, that means you're already too late, guys.

"Finch. If you don't hear from me in four minutes," John says as he unbuttons his shirt a little more getting ready for some action, "call 911, send them here, and tell them about Sam." He cocks his gun again.

But Finch has teleported over to the courtroom now, so I don't know if he's going to make any calls. Seems like that would have taken longer than four minutes, but... anyway.

John's there at the old church. The bed Sam had been huddling on is still there, but all the men are gone, along with him. He sends a text telling Finch he's had no luck while the jury gets the lady off her charges. Judge is angry, but he did what they wanted.

Outside, he's on the phone with them. "If you want your son back, come alone. No cell, no GPS, no weapons. If I see anyone who is not you, your son dies." Good thing Reese is essentially invisible.

The courthouse stairs are a mix of emotions. Judge is terrified. Lady is joyous with her sleazy lawyer. Finch is on the phone with Reese, sure the judge is walking into a death sentence.

"The machine sent us his number because they were planning on killing him all along. Him and his son."

"Scorched earth policy. Clean up and cover their tracks as soon as they get what they want."

"We need to warn him."

"I've _tried_. He won't listen."

"But we have to do something."

" _We are_." And John pops out of nowhere to grab Angela and kidnap her at gunpoint right in front of Finch and the courthouse in broad daylight. Somehow this is not a problem. 

The judge is showing up to some rainy spot by the water. A bridge in the back is atmospheric in the fog. Bald European men pile out of black SUVs. When he demands to see his son, they shrug and drag him out of the car by his collar. 

And the kidnapper is about to kill the son anyway even after the judge begs, but just then John shows up with his own hostage. He starts listing off the guy's name along with his 10 digit bank account number. 

They're all standing out in the rain. Reese is as focused and furious as he gets.

"These aren't good odds for you," says the kidnapper. Reese doesn't need odds.

"I'm not alone." John is never alone anymore. The kidnapper's phone rings.

It's a set of texts, all of the accounts Finch has drained dry.

"Every last dime has been transferred to an offshore account. Do exactly what I say and you might get it back. But if they don't walk out of here alive, every client on your list will be notified that _you_ lost all their money." At last the man realizes how screwed he is. "Then I won't have to kill you. Your clients will do that for me."

Judge looks over, impressed. Kidnapper is crushed.

"The operation's burned. Shoot them all."

John throws Angela to the side. The gang tries to shoot John but he's faster, taking them out one after the other despite standing with no cover whatsoever. Kid runs to him and the judge runs to the kid. John doesn't turn to look at the two of them right next to him, still holding his gun out, ready for anything because not all of the men are dead.

"Judge, is he all right?"

Judge is holding his son, pressing him to him. "Yeah."

"Then take him home." John never looks at them. They run to the car to flee while Reese walks up to meet his opponents these last few days. Lead kidnapper's still alive, squirming in pain by his SUV.

"It's time we go for a little ride," John says.

At the courthouse, Finch has left the prosecutor a little gift. It's a manila folder full of Angela's various accounts she allows to funnel money when she turns off the anti laundering software. He takes one quick look, satisfied, then makes sure he's gone before she goes looking for who left this.

Fusco and Carter drive up to the cash counting place Reese found earlier. "And there's Mr. Long Hair's car," Carter notes.

But she finds a whole hell of a lot more than that when she opens the counting room door. It's the whole gang along with Angela, tied up in a room with their mouths duct taped in front of piles upon piles of cash. She looks back at Fusco. _Are you seeing this?_ He sure is. John keeps impressing Fusco. The man may be frustrating, but damn if he's not effective.

John watches them arrest people and cart the shot ones away in ambulances through a rear view mirror. He sees Carter, and she almost looks his way, but she doesn't know who she's looking for yet anyway and he's always so good at being invisible.

In a park, the judge and his son are playing soccer. The kid seems remarkably not traumatized for being held hostage for days and then witnessing a major shootout he and his dad were almost killed in.

Kid calls his dad weird. It's endearing. All kids think their parents are weird. And they're right.

John comes up beside the judge while the kid chases after the ball. Judge looks over at him, side eye, suspicious but grateful.

"I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

John smiles. "Yeah, I'm uh... not great at keeping in touch with people." 

"I don't know how to thank you."

"You don't need to say anything." And he really doesn't. John does this for its own reward. Seeing people happy, seeing people live, that is what he lives for now. Judge looks over at him. "I'd prefer it actually."

"Look... I don't know exactly what you do, or _how_ you're doing it." John's eyes are distant. "But I know that if people ever find out... _when_ they find out... there won't be anything I can do to protect you."

John smiles again. He didn't ask for or expect protection. He never does. "Go play with your son." And he's gone.

We're back at the diner for breakfast again. Finch is reading as always, glass of orange juice and what may be a scramble and toast in front of him. John sits down across from him silently.

"What did he say?" Finch asks without looking up.

"That we don't need to worry. He might even help us someday."

"I was listening to your conversation, Mr. Reese." Finch flicks his eyes up from his reading for just a second.

"And I was reading between the lines."

Finch closes his book, this one a black hardcover, no jacket.

"I suppose only time will tell which one of us is right."

John's eyes are focused elsewhere, but his heart is not. "Thank you."

Finch is taken aback by that, peers at him through the top of his glasses. "I beg your pardon?"

Reese meets his eyes. His voice is low, sincere. "For giving me a job."

Finch blinks a few times, surprised and touched by this, not sure how to handle this situation, this feeling. He makes a choice.

He reaches over for a menu and pushes it across the table before tapping it a few times. He speaks without looking up, despite being watched. "Try the eggs benedict, Mr. Reese. I've had them many times." 

And he's gone. John is still for a moment, then opens the menu. There's nothing in it, no instructions, no picture. Just breakfast choices. He covers his mouth, his sweet, grateful smile. His eyes crinkle at the corners. This is a gift Harold has offered him. Real information about himself, an opening. They both know what it means. It's their first real connection as people. As friends.


	7. POI 1x06 - The Fix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Zoe Morgan, a fountain of information and a professional problem solver in her own right, and Finch is finally able to find a little justice for one of his long lost numbers.

### POI 1x06 - The Fix

#### Landmarks:

  * Zoe gets acquainted with the John and Harold
  * Carter encounters Elias for the first time
  * Carter on duty shooting count: 1
  * John starts fully understanding what the list really means and how hard this has been on Finch
  * Harold takes down a villain with his money and his guile for the first time



#### Injuries:

  * **Elias**
    * Shot by Carter but not badly enough to slow him down



* * *

The Machine is listening to a woman. "You know why I'm here. You know how I feel. I can't hide it anymore. What we're doing is wrong."

And here's Zoe for the first time, getting picked up by Reese in the guise of a driver. She's immediately skeptical, because she sniffs out bullshit for a living. "You're not my regular guy."

"He's sick. They called me to fill in at the last moment." Yeah, that's not going to do it. 

She just immediately walks away from him to call the company. But she gets Finch instead, also acting. They came prepared. 

"You changed my driver."

Finch is using his blandest possible voice. "Sorry for the inconvenience, Ms. Morgan, but Bill's come down with laryngitis. Caught it from his son."

"Which son?" She's sharp, but they're sharper.

"Andy, the younger one. We've sent our best driver in his place." That you have.

"I'll be the judge of that." She walks over to John. "No small talk, no questions. Just stay in the car, and keep your eyes on the road." 

Reese is busy rolling those eyes he's going to keep on the road. This is going to be a long night. She takes out $200, but when he puts his hand out, she tears it in two. "We'll settle up at the end of the night." Don't bother, it's not like John needs the money.

"I look forward to it." The end of the night, yes.

He clones her phone and off they go. When they're down the street, Finch steps out of hiding in a trenchcoat. From his pocket, he takes out a little kit of lockpicking tools. Unfortunately, he's not a natural at it.

"Little trouble picking this lock, Mr. Reese. It's not as easy as it looks. Nevermind, I'm in!" See, you had it, Harold.

Her place is large and nice, but spare. There's a jar of dead branches as a decoration. It's fairly depressing.

"No photos of family or friends." He takes out a flashlight, starts snooping about. "Some jazz records." Zoe was a law student once upon a time, now technically has no employer, but she was able to buy a $2 million apartment three years ago with cash. She works for herself, but they'll find that out in time. 

John's watching her in the rear view mirror. She's texting. They arrive at some random anonymous spot so Zoe can meet up with some guys, maybe gang members.

"Where does she keep the things she cares about?" Finch wonders, still milling about. She cares about information, Finch. That she keeps with her. "Where do you?"

"I don't have any things I care about." It's heartbreaking. Reese is still so empty here beyond his drive to help. This job is all life has to offer him right now. He's not healed enough yet for anything more.

Zoe steps up to a guy she refers to as Slip. "You know I always come through for you," he says, and he hands over something wrapped in fabric. 

She gives him a roll of cash held by a rubber band. "Be good, Slip."

As he gets back into the car with Zoe, Reese whispers, "You want to know where people hide things, Finch? Underneath." Finch was looking uselessly in the fridge so he probably needed to be told that. Physical investigation does not come naturally to him. Give him a keyboard and an internet connection any day and he can find what he's looking for.

John's watching in the rear view as Zoe pulls a handgun out of the wrapping. She notices him. "Keep your eyes on the road." Don't look at the gun and don't look at her changing clothes in the backseat now. She quickly strips down to her bra.

In the apartment, Finch is on the floor, crawling around looking under everything. Finally he comes to something. It's a gun, ready and waiting underneath a furniture frame. "Uh oh."

They get to somewhere with a red carpet, and Zoe tells John to leave it running because she'll be quick. Reese reports in on the gun he saw, but Finch is holding another of her weapons at her house. He's careful at least, not touching it with his bare fingers to leave prints. His hands are never perfectly steady. That's another thing he's lost.

"Why does she need another one?"

"Well, the reason you buy a gun off the street is so it's untraceable. It's possible her number came up because... she plans to kill someone." John swears internally at this late realization and takes off for the building.

Inside, it's a fancy party. Lots of cops are there with booze in their hands. Women in evening dresses stand around with glasses of champagne. Zoe texts one of the cops, and he peels away from his conversation to find her. 

John watches from the shadows and sees Zoe holding the gun. He readies his own to take her down. But she doesn't shoot the guy. She gives him the gun instead.

"You owe me one," she says. "And so does the cop who left his side arm in a subway bathroom."

"Believe me, he knows. You saved a good cop's career." Good cop better learn to be more careful.

"You sure it doesn't have to do with the fact that he's your nephew?" Heh. They talk payment. "In a perfect world, gratitude would be enough," she says. It is for Reese and Finch. But Zoe doesn't ask for money, she asks for favors, in this case getting an investigation into a councilman ended.

"Now I know where the term "necessary evil" comes from," says the cop. "That makes us square?"

"No. But it's a good start." She drives a hard bargain, this one.

It's finally the end of the night. John takes her back to her house.

"See anything interesting tonight?" she asks.

"Nothing worth mentioning." Not to her, anyway. She stares into his eyes, reading him. Reading people is how she makes her trade. And getting people to see in him what he needs them to is how John makes his trade. He keeps his neutral smile on. It's enough. She hands over the other half of the cash.

"Be here tomorrow. 10 sharp." She walks up her stairs barefoot, holding her heels, a nice touch that's very human and natural.

Reese watches her go, admiring the view. He calls in. "I hope you're out of there, Finch..."

But Finch just appears next to him instead. "Do you know what she does yet?" They look up at her apartment. Maybe have this conversation elsewhere, boys?

"She does favors. For a price. She's a fixer." Finch nods, absorbing this. This is not his realm of expertise.

"Assuming then that she's the victim, any idea who'd want to take her out?"

Reese is still looking at the door, remembering her walking those long legs in that slinky dress through it. "Who wouldn't?"

Carter's at a crime scene. She's got a guy with a wooden handled knife sticking out of his chest. One Vincent Deluca, enforcer for Brighton Beach mob.

"Stabbing's personal," she says. The knife isn't from Deluca's kitchen. "This is not serrated. Looks old, dull. Painful." Now where has she seen an old knife recently... 

When she's got his rap sheet, she finds it instantly. Vincent Deluca stabbed Marlene Elias in the back in 1973. That's where she last saw the knife. Carter's all over it.

In the morning, it's raining. John hands Zoe an umbrella as she gets out of the car. She's meeting with some business guy and his minder in a car nearby. Finch quickly finds out that the business guy is Samuel Douglas, the head of crisis management at Virtanen pharmaceuticals. 

Mr. Crisis Management is talking to Zoe about some investment blogger. Mr. Crisis works for the CFO named Mark Lawson, the one haunting the car. As Zoe talks to him about some tape with a young lady that could be "misconstrued", the CFO stares out the window, pining for a day when he wasn't having to be led around by creepy Mr. Crisis.

Zoe takes $40K to pay the blackmailer for the audio. These days, that's easier said than done.

At Central Park, she meets up with a fat man on a bench as the stereotypical internet dude. He's gross, of course.

"Nice of Virtanen to send a skirt," he says while staring at Zoe's boobs. He plays a little of the tape on a thumb drive. It's the recording from the beginning. Zoe hands him the envelope of cash and pockets the drive.

Finch and Reese don't think the fat blogger is the problem. "You need to get her talking," Finch says, standing at an empty glass board. He'd love to put information on it, but they have nothing. Reese knows this is not going to be a simple task. Secrecy is her whole business model.

At the station, Carter brings in the detective from the Elias case in the 70s, and hey, it's Dan Hedaya! He says his name is "Bernie or Sully. Dealer's choice." He's pretty upset to discover the whole business with the theft and the knife, although he's not too depressed about Deluca getting run through. "That would be divine retribution," he says.

Sully had the guy dead to rights back in the day, but the D.A. was "bought and sold". He tells the story of Marlene Elias, a waitress who had an affair with Don Moretti. No surprise, it ended badly. "The thing that stuck with me was the kid." And here we go.

The poor boy was out back playing when his mom was murdered. He came in and found her, then walked all the way to the police station barefoot. "I still got that image of him standing there with no shoes on." The kid went into the system, the awful grinding system. "You think he's your killer?"

"Don't know who else would go to so much trouble."

In the car, John tries starting a conversation by playing jazz for Zoe. Says it's a bootleg, starts babbling about Miles Davis, since that's what Finch found at her apartment. Gives the old Davis quote, "Don't play what's there. Play what's not there." Then he slides into, "You seem to know how to play people."

"I don't play people," she says. "I fix their problems. And to answer your question, no, I hate jazz." Well, that was a rousing success.

But now they're at her next meeting, and John's about to have a chance to prove his real worth. Back in an alley somewhere, it's some muscle and Mr. Crisis. Immediately, Reese has his antennae up. "Were you supposed to be meeting with two people or one?"

"What does it matter?" It matters.

"Let me take care of this, Zoe." Well, that's pretty condescending.

Yep, his ham-handed protectiveness has backfired. "It's Ms. Morgan. Get back in the car." She's right to be mad. John's handling this very badly. She leaves to make the deal.

"Didn't tell me this was a party," she says when she meets Mr. Crisis. So she wasn't expecting two. He listens to the tape she gives him but while he does that, out pops Muscle #2. John knows this is bad news. He drops his hand down from the roof to the window of the car, ready to pounce.

Mr. Crisis wants her to get in the car to go talk to Mr. CFO to thank her personally and has one of his goons open the door. When she says her fee is enough, Mr. Crisis gets stern. "No, we insist."

Yeah, no, because John's here to bash their skulls in. Even Mr. Crisis gets a mouth full of fist. Reese grabs Zoe and pulls her to their car out in the sunlight. He and Mr. Crisis exchange some gunfire as he goes to drive away, but no one gets hit. The goons' SUV front tire is not so lucky.

Mr. Crisis doesn't give up easily. He runs out into the street, and shoots the back glass out of Reese's car. "Get down!" John shouts at Zoe and returns fire, driving at full speed all the while. Zoe's impressed as they pull away.

"Guess I'm paying you to do more than drive."

Finch checks in having heard this whole mess. "Mr. Reese, are you okay?"

"Yeah, the hand off was an ambush. Douglas tried to kill both of us."

Zoe doesn't realize he's talking to his invisible friend. "Oh, thanks. I was there, remember?"

"Is she safe?" worries Finch.

"For now, a little shaken up."

And Zoe figures it out. "Who are you talking to?"

The voice she can't hear is thinking about the next steps. "They're willing to kill for that recording. We need to find out what's on it."

"Send me Talbott's address!" Reese is still completely keyed up, still has his gun out with his finger on the trigger, ready to protect his charge at any second.

"Who the hell are you?" she demands.

"You can say we're in the same business, fixing _problems_. I had information that you might be in danger."

"Information? Who gave it to you?" Well, she's a little hard to explain. 

Zoe trades in information. If there's a new source this good, she needs to know about it.

"You have your people, I have mine." Yep. He's got a growing collection.

Turns out Zoe made a copy of the tape. "I'm discreet, not stupid." She plays it. They don't know who the woman on the recording is. The audio is garbage.

At the blogger's house, there's an ambulance outside as Reese pulls up in his car still covered in shattered safety glass from the shootout. He leaves Zoe in the car to check it out as Finch reports in with the obvious. "Report on the police band. Talbott is dead. Apparent cardiac arrest." Right. 

They know Mr. Crisis is after anyone who had any exposure to that recording. "If they're going to this much trouble, they'll be coming after Ms. Morgan again. You need to stay with her." John would agree, but when he gets back to the car, she's abandoned him already.

At the library, Finch is at his desk, busy working with the audio. "Interference suggests it was made on an old PCS cell network, making the recording at least... two years old."

Reese is pacing around. He's great with the physical work, but he lost their number so now he's feeling useless and restless. But he's impressed with Finch showing off his skills nonetheless. "I didn't know static had a vintage."

Finch gets up, his voice tensing in the transition as it does, but he's too busy working to slow down. "I did manage to find a match on the woman's voice. Compared it with video on social networking sites, corporate press." He has such remarkable software at his fingertips. "268 possible matches, 6 who lived in New York, but only one who worked at Virtanen Pharmaceuticals."

He puts on the video for Reese and John sits down to watch, but Finch drops his head, listening only. It's her voice that matters, not her face, but he knows both very well.

This isn't half bad, John thinks. "Dana Miller, Lawson's mistress, was an office romance. Nice work, Finch."

But Harold isn't happy. "I wouldn't be so quick to congratulate me." He never would. He looks over. "It's not the first time I've heard Dana Miller's name." He limps over to his list, pulls off a pin with a news clipping. 

"Six months ago, the Machine gave me her number." He turns around, holding the clipping, physical evidence of his failure. "I had yet to track you down, so I wasn't in a _position_ to help her." He licks his lips. Each of these losses is an individual stab wound, and he keeps them all organized and ready at hand for reference. 

John is stunned, sits with his mouth open. This is the first time he's seen the true reality of Finch's list, how agonizing it was that he could see all these people in trouble, people suffering and dying in front of him, but he had no ability to do anything for them except watch and document. He did this for years, and it's all right there in numbers and pins.

"Newspaper said she died of a brain aneurysm." Harold hands over the clipping. "She was 27. And as you know, the Machine doesn't see _accidents_."

Reese thinks it seems pretty simple. "She wanted to go public with the affair, and Lawson had her killed for it. Why not pay her off, Finch?"

"Mark Lawson is heir to the entire Virtanen empire. If Robert Keller ever found out, Lawson would lose everything."

"It wouldn't be hard for someone working at a pharmaceutical company to make _murder_ look like natural causes."

Finch is far away, quiet. "I never thought I'd know the truth about what happened to her." He looks back down at Reese. "Now I also know the men responsible. We can stop them from _ever_ giving us another number."

He walks past Reese who watches him. He's never seen Finch this way before. He doesn't show feeling easily, but this woman's death and all these deaths hurt him and all that pain stayed with him. Now he's angry. There's a brutality in him, a thirst for vengeance that John did not anticipate. This list is not just a document. It's a graveyard. And Finch lives in it.

As he takes his coat from the rack, Harold has instructions. "Get out there and find Ms. Morgan. Every moment we don't have her is a moment that Douglas can get to her."

"Well, what are you going to do?"

"I have an important business meeting. Recent investment of mine." Finch does not commit violence with weapons. He does it with words and money. New power.

At the pharmaceutical company by a desk made to look sciencey with erlenmeyer flasks and graduated cylinders, Mr. CFO is grumpy. "We cleared my schedule for a meeting with a shareholder?"

Mr. Crisis is looking through a file. "Guy isn't just a shareholder. Bought 87 million shares in the last 48 hours." Damn, Finch works fast and he doesn't mess around. "He now owns 8% of Virtanen stock."

"Never heard of this guy."

"No one has. May be a straw buyer for a takeover, hostile bid... But, uh... kid gloves. And we may want to wheel the old man in here for a minute to press the flesh."

Finch is Mr. Partridge today, using a cane and carrying a box in his hand. He's left his rectangular glasses on. He wants to look sharp and intelligent here. He smiles and shakes Mr. CFO's hand. He's a good actor when he needs to be. "Thank you for meeting me on such short notice."

"I thought I knew everyone with an investment portfolio as broad as yours."

"When you're in a position where people want your money, a little anonymity is rather rewarding." That it is. He presents the box in his hands. "From my time in Japan. I learned never to go to a business meeting empty handed."

"That is... too generous. Thank you." Don't get too excited. What looks like a watch may tell time, yes, but it tells a hell of a lot more than that. Mr. CFO takes Harold on a tour.

"What we like to focus on," he says as they walk through a lab, "is what people really need: pain relief."

"I can certainly relate to that."

"We reached a 20% market share last year." Giving the Sacklers a run for their money. "And that's only going to rise with the launch of our new product line, anchored by Sylocet." 

Finch's eyes never stray from Mr. CFO. "Sylocet?"

"New migraine drug. Revolutionary. Just approved by the FDA." 

They go downstairs where a giant Sylocet ad and the old man CEO Keller are there in a fancy wooden lobby.

"This is an _impressive_ empire you've built here, sir." Impressive is one way to describe it. 

"Oh, it's Mark's empire now. Retirement isn't officially until next spring, but he makes all the big decisions." While they're talking, Mr. Crisis lurks in the background. "Don't tell anyone," this pasty old rich asshole says. "I'd hate to lose my table at the country club." Cringing inside, Finch laughs, still in character.

CEO Keller makes a point to mention that CFO Mark's involved in "a good amount of _product research._ "

Finch smiles, leans in. "I like what I see here. I'm confident my money is in good hands."

The secretary goes to lead him out, but Harold's phone beeps. "Excuse me, I have to take this." He definitely does, because it's the men talking into the microphone he left them in the watch.

"Flash drive's recovered. Talbott won't be a problem again. But just one loose end. Zoe Morgan. She had a bodyguard posing as a driver. It was an unforeseen circumstance."

Mr. CFO puts down his fancy carved crystal decanter of whiskey. "That's not a loose end. That's the whole damn thing falling apart."

"I'll handle her."

"And the driver too. Nothing can connect us to this thing." Except Finch. He's walking away from the building, ever listening.

Carter picks up the phone at her desk. It's Detective Sully again. They're tracking down the kid, Carl Elias. He was a professional runaway from the age of 8. Sully has Elias' Christmas cards to the only one of his foster parents he liked at all. They're apparently pretty wild, so Sully wants Carter to come see them. "I'll make myself look beautiful for you," he flirts in that cute old man way.

Carter smiles at her desk. "Good luck with that, Sully."

At the library, Finch is obsessing over the audio for the millionth time, and Reese is pacing around again. "I still can't find Zoe." His only consolation is, "If I can't track her down, Douglas probably can't either."

Finch doesn't look away from the waveforms on the screen. "I think Dana recorded this in Lawson's office. Listen."

But Reese doesn't know what he's supposed to be listening for. "So? She recorded the conversation on her cellphone. To blackmail him?"

Finch waves that idea away. "No, I don't think so. Here's the fountain in his office. Using the bug I planted, I was able to get room tone. Then I can strip it back _out_ of the original recording. Listen, this is much clearer."

And sure enough, there's more. Reese's hand drops to the table when they hear it. Finch repeats it. "Keeps me up at night knowing what our drug has done." Reese's eyes are wide. "I still have to clean up the last part of the recording, but there's enough here that you can tell that Dana was not having an affair with Lawson. She was threatening to blow the whistle on him." Finch's long lost soul died trying to help people.

What's ironic is if they'd just treated it as a simple affair, no one as clever as Finch would have ever taken such a difficult crack at cleaning up the audio, and no one would have ever known the truth. But by being conspicuous in trying to destroy the evidence, they only made it obvious there was evidence there to find.

Finch stands, walks to view his list, the long line of helpless human misery. Reese follows him, watching him quietly, feeling for him. 

"You know, before we– before _I_ found you, the numbers... haunted me." He grits his teeth. "I never felt so _helpless_ in my entire life." Not when he was injured, not when he couldn't walk for months. He turns around to face John. "I know I can't get justice for all of them. But the possibility of having just _one_..." He almost reaches with his hand for it, touching that tiny piece of justice in his mind. He squeezes the words as the idea squeezes his heart.

The _we_ in Finch's speech is so important. He and the Machine were together. She was all he had, and he was all she had in the long lonely stretch after Nathan's death and his own. They could do nothing but watch and mourn, so that is what they did, the only solace they could give to these poor lost souls. They were alone together in their way.

John looks so soft and sympathetic. But there's no time to say anything, because this show avoids any consequences of emotion ever, and the GPS tracker is beeping.

"Looks like our Ms. Morgan has decided to be found after all. This time when you find her, try not to lose her." Reese is on his way.

At one of those restaurants with white tablecloths, candles, and seemingly four wine glasses for every person, Zoe is waiting along with a bottle of red. John's wearing a tie. 

When he sits down, she smirks. "So you are tracking my cell phone." He doesn't need to answer that. "I know how all the pieces of this city fit together. I know all the players. I know all the angles. And then there's you." John loves it. She's saying he's special. "Now I don't understand you. And I don't like things that I don't understand."

"Then why did you want me to come here?" He's sitting casually, head tilted.

"Because I don't have to like you to get some news out of you. The girl on the recording. Her name was Dana Miller. Lawson had her killed." He's way ahead of her.

He gives her what he knows about the drug and Zoe mentions it's not the whole story. Dana Miller worked in clinical trials and five days before she died she was transferred out.

John's intrigued. "How did you come by that?"

"You have your people. I have mine."

"Let me guess. You're looking to strike a deal with Virtanen."

"No, not this time."

"I thought everyone had an angle."

Zoe thinks for a second, starts a story. "I knew this girl once, naive. She got a _tough_ lesson on the way the world works. That reminds me of Dana."

"Also..." He leans in. "They tried to kill you."

"Well, there's that, too." She looks down, decides. "You wanna get out of here?"

John takes a good swig of that fine red. "Where are we going?"

"To do something illegal." Now she's speaking his language.

They're waiting on some steps somewhere. A guy walks up. "Lieutenant Gilmore. Almost didn't recognize you without that cute uniform." The flirting doesn't make this guy feel any better being here.

"What do you want now?"

"There's going to be a break in at Virtanen pharmaceuticals tonight. I need you to make sure that the police don't respond."

Cop looks around. "After this, we're done." He eyes Reese and walks away.

At the library, it's night. Reese is on the com. "All right, Finch. Our cameras are in place."

"I have full coverage, proceed."

They're raiding the company. Reese waits until the security guard goes past the door like it's a stealth video game. Then he goes to work on the electronic lock. 

"So these people are trying to kill you, and your plan is to break into their office." You're going along with it, John.

"I prefer the direct approach."

Finch has answers for any question Reese has about where the guards are. 

"Do I ever get to meet your imaginary friend?" she asks.

John speaks in italics. "He's a _very private person_." Less private every day, whether he likes it or not. He's letting John or having no choice but to let John see him inside so much more with every case he helps him with. But Finch isn't paying any attention to their chat right now. He's too busy looking out for them.

They make it to a door, Reese immediately goes at it with his lockpicking tools. 

"You're probably one of those guys who can get out of anything with a paperclip. Where'd you learn this stuff?"

He grins as the door swings open. "It's a long story." She pauses, thinking about what that story could be.

They get to a computer but Dana Miller's information is deleted. Which is exactly why Finch gave John recovery software.

It's a rare time to see a computer screen reflected in Reese's eyes. It turns out Dana was looking into the clinical trials for Sylocet. Six names were deleted from the data the company sent to the FDA. Finch demands to have them.

As soon as he has them and does a quick search, it's clear something is terribly wrong.

"They're all dead, Mr. Reese. Every person on that list died of heart failure within a year of taking the drug. Lawson must have dropped them from the study and paid the locals to hide it."

"Their new wonder drug is a killer."

Zoe's doing the math. "6 people out of 200, that's a 3% mortality rate. If a million people take that drug, 30,000 could die."

And then Finch pipes up again. "Wait, what is that sound?"

"Air conditioning. Why?"

"That's what I've been missing." He's talking fast now, typing fast. "Listen. Don't talk, don't move, I need a clean recording." Within a few seconds he has what he needs. He wants this so badly, justice for someone he thought he would never be able to provide it for. "Perfect. I'll be in touch."

And John's on his own with Zoe. Someone really should have been watching the cameras because the lights come on and guess what, it's Mr. Crisis and he's got a gun. He's got that police lieutenant from earlier with him too. Zoe is disappointed. She promises to destroy him, but he doesn't think she'll get the chance. "Besides, I held up my end. You wanted the cops not to respond? This is the cops not responding." 

Finch has finished his tinkering with the audio. It's perfect. He hurries back to the computer with the cams. "Mr. Reese, I think I've found something. Mr. Reese?" Uhhh, maybe you should have been watching their backs, Harold?

Mr. CFO is on his way to the scene. It would be smarter not to show up in person, but if he were smart, he wouldn't have done all this in the first place.

Reese and Zoe are tied to metal chairs in a lab storage area. John's hands look relaxed. He's been tied to so many chairs, it's second nature to him. 

"You never did tell me your name," she says.

He considers for a second. "John. The name's John."

She smiles, rolls her eyes. "Of course it is." He's still amused by her. "So, _John_. How did you know I was going to be in trouble?"

He shrugs. "Given your choice of career, doesn't seem like much of a stretch." She doesn't know what to make of him at all. "You might consider a new line of work."

"You're one to judge. Besides, you don't know anything about me."

"I know almost everything about you," he says. "I know you grew up in a nice house in Yonkers. I know your dad was a city official til he got snared in a corruption case." He doesn't look at her. He speaks to the floor by her feet. "I know you spent the rest of your... childhood in a little apartment in Queens with your mother."

When he finally does look at her, she is floored. She's not used to being the one being given the information. It's disarming, terrifying. "About the only thing I don't know about you is why you started doing whatever it is you do."

She is caught. What's there to lie about now? "My dad was a party man. _Machine_ politician. Did what he was told." John listens, as ever attentive and sympathetic. "Right up until the cops showed up, put the cuffs on him. The local press was camped out on our lawn for weeks. Then this guy showed up, the guy the _party_ would send to deal with... uncomfortable situations. He said two words. And those reporters? They packed up, and they left. And they never came back." John is moved by her emotion. This was traumatizing for her and this strange man with his strange power was the only light she saw. "And I realized..." she bites her lip, " _that's_ what I want to be. The person who knows what to say, and _always_ has something to trade."

"So what are you gonna trade now?"

She doesn't have time to answer because Mr. Crisis is back.

Back at the library, Finch is panicking, pacing back and forth. He's on the phone. "Yes, it's Mr. Partridge, I need to speak to Mr. Keller immediately."

"I'm sorry, sir," says the receptionist. "Mr. Keller is currently unavailable."

"Listen, put him on the phone right now. It's extremely urgent. A matter of life and death."

Probably Reese's death, because he's getting pummeled while tied up. And that Mr. CFO Mark Whatever is there. 

"So you saw the Sylocet report?"

"Hope you don't mind," Zoe tells him. "I emailed a copy to a friend so I could read it more thoroughly." Mark believes her, but John knows for a fact she's lying. "You're the only person I trust. And if anything happens to us, that report goes public. Everyone will know your new drug kills. What do you think Keller will do to you when he finds out?"

"Tell you what, since Zoe loves negotiating so much, I'll offer you two a deal. First one to get that report gets to live." No one is speaking yet.

Finch is still on the phone, still panicked and lit entirely in blue. 

"I've reached Mr. Keller," the secretary says. "He'll be with you in just a moment."

But while he's on hold, the rest of the recording gets cleared up. Keller's on it. He not only knows what the drug does, he approved it. "How stupid do you think I am?" he asks Dana in the past.

The receptionist comes back. "Mr. Partridge, you're on with Mr. Keller." Harold hangs up immediately and drops the phone like it's on fire.

And there's Keller, right on time in the lab. He's got his phone in his hand from his near call with Mr. Partridge. "Mark, why aren't they dead yet? Just when I thought you could handle something truly important."

He goes to Zoe. "Ms. Morgan... be reasonable. Every new drug has side effects. That's why we have disclaimers. And insurance." Meanwhile, Mr. Crisis is filling a syringe with nothing good. "This... moral crusade doesn't suit _you_." It will soon. "The Zoe Morgan I know is reasonable. Knows when to make the smart play." 

John turns his head, watching her. His life is in her hands. He's crushed when she chooses herself.

"I'll get you the report. I'll bring you right to it."

Keller's delighted and she's cut free. She bends down to talk to Reese. He looks knives into her. "Told you. Always have something to trade." And she grabs his head and kisses him while her other hand slips down and slides a paperclip into his. "Let's go."

And John's immediately to work while he sizes up his competition, Mr. Crisis standing there, syringe in hand.

"You know, you really shouldn't be surprised by what Zoe did," he says. We can see the bottle now. Potassium chloride. He's going for cardiac arrest like he did with the blogger. "Never trusted that bitch. Always looking for an angle." Amusingly, he taps the needle to get the bubbles out, but that only matters if you don't want to kill someone.

John is sweaty, tense, and he gets Mr. Crisis to waste a few extra seconds blathering about his drug of choice. "Government uses it for lethal injections. Stops a heart in minutes. Quite humane, really." He shoves John's head over to the side to expose his neck. 

"Lucky you," John says.

"Lucky _me_?" And John's on him in an instant, up out of the chair and grabbing him by the throat to shove him against the wall. Mr. Crisis tries to resist, but it's no good. Reese pushes his own hand into him, and the needle with it. His eyes lose focus and he falls limp. John lets him drop to the ground. Reese did what needed to be done, what he does best, but it kills him too a little more each time.

Zoe's in the car. "I'm on my way now. The naval yard." But Mr. CFO takes the phone out of her hand. "Jail rules, no more phone calls."

Finch is on the other end of the line. How'd she get his number? "Clever girl," he says, like she's a velociraptor. He gets another call right after.

"Finch." Reese is out of breath in the lab. Dead Mr. Crisis is just visible behind him.

"Been trying to get you for two hours. Keller's involved. He and Lawson worked it together, up to and including Dana's murder.

"I know..." He's so tired. "Keller blindsided us, and so did Zoe." John is bruised and battered. He looks awful. "She's about to hand over that trial data to Lawson."

"You should be more trusting, Mr. Reese." This, from Harold Finch. "Zoe just sent me her destination." How, though? "Naval yard, sound familiar?"

"I'm on my way."

Finch, on the other hand, smiles at a waiter who leads him to a table in a fancy restaurant. Sitting there is Keller, munching on his meal like nothing ever happened.

"Mr. Keller. Sorry I'm late." They shake hands, although a part of Finch would rather throw him into a woodchipper.

"Sorry I started without you, Mr. Partridge, but when you're as old as I am, you can't waste a minute." You should never have made it this far, you ghoul. He's got his hand up on Finch's shoulder. It's repellent and only gets worse. "What's your poison?"

Finch is a good actor, but it takes all he has not to lose it right there. He sucks in a breath and tries desperately to stay anywhere near the vicinity of calm and friendly.

At the naval yard, Mr. CFO wants to know why they're there. "You want your report, right?" she asks. She rolls down her window, points at a silver car across the way. "He's right over there. You want me to go get it or you?"

Oh, hey, it's Slip. He's being good, as she asked. Racist rich white guy is too scared to get out of the car now. And he's got another card to play anyway. "No, I don't think so. You know what I think? I don't think you emailed that report to anybody at all. In fact, I think it's been right here all along." He holds up her phone. He's right, of course.

At the fancy breakfast, where he ordered a bloody mary of course, Keller's talking up his monstrous company as Finch pokes at his eggs. "You picked a perfect time to join us, Mr. Partridge. Once Sylocet goes on the market, you'll never have to invest in another company again." Finch looks down, turns his phone over. Still nothing. _Hell._ He has to keep listening to this depraved sack pretending to be a man. He puts on his best fake smile. It's getting harder by the second. 

The situation in the car's not going any better. "See, anybody else, you know, they would have sent this report to the police or the press. But not you." Slip is still waiting across the way, flexing his hand, balling a fist over and over. "No, you just couldn't resist holding onto one more card." He fishes through her emails. Did she let him unlock her phone? "Yup. So you did send it to the one person in the world you could trust. Yourself. Now you're going to take it to the grave." Are you going to actually get your hands dirty yourself this time, guy? 

It looks like Slip's guys are all coming forward at once in the too far distance. "Let's get the hell out of here." 

And maybe they would have, but by staring at Slip the whole time, they missed Reese coming up from the other side. He shoots the passenger immediately through the window glass, shattering it, which gives him the space to reach in and punch the driver out too. That leaves Mr. CFO, who jumps out of the car and is instantly tased in the head and he falls to the ground, motionless. 

"Migraine, huh?" John says as he kneels to rifle Mr. CFO's pockets. "Heard they got a pill for _that_ now." He's been working on those one liners.

Zoe comes around to this side of the car. She was really scared, even in her controlled way, and she's still dealing with the sensation. "Took your time."

Reese looks up at her in disbelief. _Are you kidding me?_ He stands up. "At what point did you know _you_ were going to do the right thing?"

She shrugs. "About two seconds before I slipped you the paper clip." Great, so we should be glad you decided at the very last second not to let him die? Or even give him the distant hope of not dying? Yeah, John is pretty amazed she has the gall to say this, but at least she did it.

The check's come at breakfast. This has taken forever. Keller's still talking and Finch is dying inside with every word. "Anyway..." Oh dear god. But at least he's moved onto business rather than whatever bullshit husks of people like him talk about.

"Pleasant as it is to talk, the board and I do need to know what your... _intentions_ are, now that you own 8% of Virtanen."

Finch stares at him across the table, this alien being so devoid of empathy or decency. The only thing they have in common is money, which is exactly the fulcrum on which Harold's plan turns. 

His phone buzzes just in time. It's Reese. Only three words, but exactly what he needs: _Got FDA Report_. Finch looks up, preternaturally calm as he considers how to proceed. The calm before the storm. He has waited so long for this, justice at last. His voice is entirely different than the one he's been using as Partridge.

"Actually, I've sold my shares in Virtanen." Keller cannot believe it. "I had a tip that the price is about to take a nosedive.

"Tip? What tip?"

"That senior management was about to have _serious legal problems_. In fact, I took my initial investment and I shorted your company, to the tune of a half a billion shares." Finch plays to win. He made this move not knowing it would all resolve, but trusting Reese to get done what was needed. 

Keller goes into angry defense. "If you're betting against me... you _clearly_ don't know who you're dealing with."

Finch's voice is low, ice. "Oh, I know exactly what kind of man I'm dealing with." He looks down at the photo in his hand. Poor Dana, who cared about people, who wanted to save lives not end them, smiles in much happier distant times. Dana, who Harold watched be murdered and could not help.

"And I know you don't care who you hurt to get what you want." He puts the sweet picture on the silver check tray (which says their breakfast was $416?!?). "I know the only thing you _do_ care about is money." Keller is floored, gaping at the picture and Finch's complete ruthlessness. "So that's what I'm going to _take_ from you. Your money. All of it. You were right, Mr. Keller. Thanks to you, I never will have to invest in another company."

He drops $500 onto the tray next to Dana's picture. _I'll do you the courtesy of picking up the check. You're destitute now, so you certainly can't._

Finch stands, glaring in disgusted satisfaction at this worthless man he's just crushed to dust in the only way that counts to someone as empty as him. When he walks away, he walks away not as Partridge but simply as Harold himself, his true self, carrying the cane he does not need anymore up in his hand.

Carter's storming up some stairs somewhere. It's Detective Sully's place. Sadly, Dan Hedaya is not going to be getting any more work on this show. His door's cracked. She tries knocking, calling for him, but there's nothing. She pushes the door open. "It's me, Car–" He's on the ground, motionless. Dead. "Oh no."

She runs back to the stairs in time to see a man, a shadow running down a few floors below, getting away fast. "Police!" And that only gets her shot at. She's fast and gets over to cover before returning fire at a man in a ball cap. The man disappears out of the doorway.

She chases after him, looks everywhere on the street, but there's nothing. But then she sees it on the doorframe. Blood. She winged him. And now she has evidence, a path forward toward justice.

The TV news talks about Keller and Mr. CFO appearing in court to address charges of fraud, conspiracy, and murder. Sylocet has been shelved. There's something about a competitor, Beecher pharmaceuticals.

We're hearing this in the car, with Zoe in the back. "Mind turning that off, please?"

It's Reese driving. "Sounds like Beecher got an inside tip. Somebody must have had a big payday." He peers at her in the rear view. 

"Not as big as you think." Could Beecher be one of Finch's companies, maybe? "Dana Miller's family got a healthy donation for their suit against Virtanen."

"I also heard Lieutenant Gilmore found himself up against some pretty serious corruption charges. Must have upset someone pretty influential." John's got his bedroom eyes on. He'd like some of that influence. 

"Eyes on the road, John," she says. She's into him too. Guess the nearly leaving him to die thing is water under the bridge. 

They arrive somewhere, and he opens the door for her. "Ms. Morgan." She turns around. "Stay out of trouble." 

Zoe shakes her head. "Not gonna happen." They're both never going to stop getting into trouble. "You got my number." That they do.


	8. POI 1x07 - Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John saves the life of a man who will take many other lives in return. A powerful and lasting frenemy of Team Machine is revealed.

### POI 1x07 - Witness

#### Landmarks

  * Elias is fully introduced and takes control, abandoning his cover
  * Finch meets Fusco in person for the first time
  * Szymansky from Organized Crime meets Carter and Fusco



#### Injuries

  * **Elias**
    * Shot in the shoulder and field treated by Reese, his second gunshot wound in the last few weeks
  * **Fusco**
    * Knocked upside the head and knocked out, concussion count 1



* * *

Some Russian voice wants to "kill him myself" and someone gets shot in a bodega on a security cam. Somebody balding leans over the body. We'll see him again.

At the scene, Carter and Fusco are working the case. Fusco's annoyed, but Carter knows this is nothing simple. The balding guy is a witness. They'll have to find him.

Szymansky is here, he's organized crime. Things are getting more complicated already. The dead man is an old enforcer. Fusco is surprised, Brighton Beach is Russian territory.

"So who's his boss?" Carter wants to know. 

"We don't know much. Only a name. Elias." Of course. Carter knows they're in deep now. They need to find the witness before the Russians do. In the video, the witness looks up as he checks the dying guy on the floor for a pulse. Hey, it's Enrico Colantoni, one of the best character actors ever, Mathesar himself! *joyful awkward sideways clap*

And there he is in the flesh. Reese is taking high zoom pics and Finch gives his standard exposition. His name is Charlie Burton, and the only thing they're sure of is he's worried about something, milling about in his apartment. He's a high school history teacher, no wife, lives in Brighton Beach.

"Well, maybe a student's after him. You know, teaching can be a dangerous profession." Finch will learn that quite well for himself later on.

"Yes, I imagine espionage was a much safer choice, Mr. Reese." John is amused as he continues to take pictures.

And look, it's Lionel calling. Now he has a direct line to Reese, only recently given.

"I'm not sure how you usually do what you do, but uh... I'm looking for a guy, and I could use some help." Fusco is learning to trust John as an investigator and a force for good. He starts his description and wouldn't you know, it's our guy in Reese's sights as they speak. "We need to find him."

"I think I already did."

"Why am I not surprised? Listen, whoever did this hit, they're gonna come looking for him."

Finch is in the library listening to all this. There's their problem, and it's instantly serious business. But then it gets worse.

"They've already found him." Reese watches three black cars pull up fast. They're on the job, but so is John.

There's trepidation in Finch's voice. "Mr. Reese...? We might want to leave this one to the authorities."

"No time. I'm heading in." Reese never leaves anything to anyone else if he can help it. He doesn't want to endanger them, only himself. And he knows he can do it. He can be there in time. In the library Finch tenses, but there's nothing to be done once John has his mind set to something. 

Six scary guys with huge guns roll out and in. They're making their plans, oblivious as Reese strolls behind them into the alley by the building. He casually jumps a fence as Finch tries to track this and help on his computer, eyes flitting back and forth, scanning. All he can do is watch.

Our boy Charlie is making tea, fretting in his kitchen. Just past the room, John is waiting and he just about gives Charlie a heart attack. He scrambles in the kitchen for a weapon as if there's anything that would stop John Reese just sitting in a drawer. He chooses a cheap steak knife. It's almost cute when he holds it out. 

"Mr. Burton, you're in danger. The men from the bodega are here." When he gets more questions, Reese goes for the direct approach. "Sir, you have a Russian hit team closing in, which leaves us with approximately five seconds before you make a decision."

"How do I know you're not one of them?"

John takes a step forward. "Because I'm standing in front of you, and you're still alive." Yep.

They get down the hall just in time. But Finch knows there's more than just grabbing the guy. "Mr. Reese, can you get out? Do you need me to call in a distraction?"

John and Charlie are out in the courtyard playground now, moving, watching. "Let me get back to you on that." He's too busy at the moment. There's a guard at the end of the walkway with a gun, which John takes after beating the guy upside the head a few times. He's breathing hard when he turns back to Charlie, who is amazed by this one man army saving his life. "Let's get moving. Now."

There's a building block ahead, but according to Charlie, it's dangerous territory, far too risky. Reese asks Finch for another route, but his phone is crushed from fighting with Mr. Walkway. He asks for Charlie's phone, but he says he doesn't believe in them, which Reese can't believe either. 

"We're on our own."

Which Finch is anxiously discovering in the library. "Mr. Reese, can you hear me?" The only reply is a dead phone line. His screen shows the signal lost. Finch takes a moment, then moves out of his chair to take other action. None of this is going to be easy.

Reese decides to take a parked car. Charlie doesn't like it. "Hey, this isn't mine!"

John smashes the driver's side glass in. "Not mine either. Get in."

As his savior/kidnapper tears open the steering column to hotwire the car, Charlie in the passenger seat has a question. "Can I at least get your name before we commit grand theft auto together?"

John doesn't introduce himself, instead just going through the necessary next steps. Charlie needs to get to the police and testify, but he's absolutely resistant, since testifying against the Russian mob is pretty much instant death. Reese knows that's true, but "I've got a detective we can trust. We've got to get you across the river to Manhattan." Fusco? Wow, Fusco and trust referred to in the same sentence. 

And maybe they'd get across that river, but a machine gunner appears in the street and shoots a row of holes into the windshield. John pulls Charlie down and leans out of the car upside down to shoot at their assailant. If there is anything John is, it is resourceful. Whatever needs done, whatever it takes, he will find a way if he is needed. That narrow skewed vantage point is enough to shoot the knees out of the gunman.

"We need to keep moving!" Reese says, but that's going to be even more of a challenge than it was, because Charlie has been shot in the shoulder. They hurry toward the building that even the Russians avoid, their last refuge.

Charlie's not doing so well as they work their way through the first few corridors of the building. His wound is through and through, bleeding on both sides. John's half dragging him, fierce determination in his eyes, as ever when he's deep in his work. They check out one possible room to hide in, but there's someone cooking drugs in there. "See what I mean?" Charlie says. 

When they finally find some half burned out, half destroyed remains of an apartment, Reese goes to check on Charlie's bullet wound. "This is crazy," he says, groaning as John tugs delicately at his collar. "I still don't even know who you are."

"I help people," John says, "and you need help." That is his purpose in life, his reason to keep breathing. To help people. It is all he ever wanted, all he ever needed, and Finch and the Machine give him that chance.

It's agony for Charlie as Reese assesses, but it's good news at least. "Bullet went straight through clean. No bone damage." Not much solace for Charlie, but being alive is the best he could hope for at this point. "But we need to get you cleaned up before it gets infected." Yeah, sure, although bacteria are the least of their worries right now.

Charlie rolls his eyes. "You see a pharmacy nearby?"

John kicks an old upholstered chair back onto its feet and plants a groaning Charlie onto it to question him about what he saw at the bodega. He doesn't really see the point, but Reese has one.

"I guess I like to know a little bit about the guys who are shooting at me."

Fair enough. Charlie tells a story of being unable to choose between minestrone and split pea which left him in the wrong place at the wrong time. He pleads with his eyes, swears he didn't see their faces. "They had masks. But one of them lifted his, like he wanted that guy to see his face." Yeah, it was the gunman who wanted that. Right, "Charlie"? 

"But that guy they killed? He said he had a message for someone named Elias. And he wanted me to give it to him, but I don't know an Elias." Why tell John any of this about Elias? Assuming he already knows something in that lane or otherwise he wouldn't even be here?

John sits down backwards in a chair, straddling the back, taps his foot a little as he settles. "Mr. Burton, what was the message?"

"I didn't understand it. Something about Vinnie. Vinnie was gonna finish the job for him." When John asks why he didn't go to the police, Charlie's quick with a comeback. "You don't understand this neighborhood, do you? Going to the cops is like playing Russian roulette. You don't know which side they're on."

"I'll get you to a police officer you can trust." He will find a safe path for this man. Of that, John is determined. 

Charlie still says no. "This is my home. My students, for starters, I c-can't leave them. They need me."

That, of course, touches John to his heart. Anyone who cares for others has great value to him. "Well, you won't do those kids any good if you're dead, Mr. Burton."

"Charlie, please. Mr. Burton is for my students."

John's voice is cool and soft. "Do you want to die, Charlie? Because this isn't a history lesson. Those bullets are real." Charlie looks away, his breathing uneven. He is scared, in pain, and Reese knows it. His face softens. "My name is John." He reaches out, hand open.

Charlie shakes it, gripping with his wrong hand as the other is immobile with his still bleeding shoulder. "Thank you for saving my ass, John." Everyone should say that to Reese.

At the station, Szymansky is with Fusco and Carter, talking to the dead man's wife. When he says he's sorry for her loss, she snaps. "You're not sorry. You hated my husband."

"No, I only hated what he did for a living."

The boys are getting nowhere, so Carter leans in to connect with her on a more human level. "I know that anger you're feeling right now. What it's like to lose someone you love. Help us find the men who did this to your husband."

"It doesn't matter if you find them. Elias will. And he'll kill each and every one of those Russian bastards."

"Elias started a war that can't be won," Carter says. She's trying to reach this woman, sympathy in the furrows of her brow. Beside her, Fusco is a wall of condescension, tilting his head at this wife of a mobster, unlikely to be of any real help. "Now a lot of innocent people are going to die if this continues. Do you want that?"

"If that's what it takes." 

Carter sighs. She couldn't reach her on that level of compassion, the lens she sees the world through.

Szymansky wants to find Elias, but Patti says they never will. She hasn't met him either. "You're not seeing it. Brighton Beach is just the beginning. Elias has bigger plans. He'll reunite the five families and take out the Russian trash. And then when he's finished, you people," she sneers, "will be answering to him."

At some ATM somewhere, Finch is on his own mission in a pinstripe coat. There are words in Russian in the signs for the bank, Bayridge Savings. He casually taps some buttons on the ten key, and voila, he's into the command prompt. The screen scrolls by, we see an IP address and "CAM REROUTE". He's on it. He looks into the camera itself briefly as he alters it. Actors rarely look directly at the camera. Michael Emerson as Finch does it all the time.

REROUTE COMPLETE, the screen says. Finch limps away, successful but still anxious. This only brings him to a point to even hope to start helping. As he gets into a car, behind him Carter and Fusco roll out of theirs.

They're at the crime scene where Reese shot the guy who shot Charlie. Szymansky is already there. "And he wasn't dodging bullets by himself."

"Who was he with?" Who do you think, Carter? Who's always in these sorts of situations?

"Some tall guy in a suit. Definitely not with the Russias. Shot one of them in the knee..." and Carter scoffs. Of course, the Man in the Suit always blows knees out when he's protecting people against killers. It can't be anyone else. "...before they got away. What? You know him?"

"It's just someone I've been tracking for a while." Fusco strategically looks away. He's got that someone's phone number in his speed dial. "Best I've got, he's former military. A pain in the ass."

Fusco thinks that one of them might have been hit. His cop instincts are actually not bad and they get better as he leans into his own core decency and as he learns by Carter's example. 

Szymansky says the Russian isn't talking, "But we got an ATM camera across the street. Might help shed some light on things." Yes, about that camera...

Besides, Carter's right, as always. "It'll take two weeks and a warrant to get the footage."

Oh, but Szymansky has someone's cell pic. It's the Russian boss' son.

And Carter calls over an officer with a serious scar on his face to get this Ivan Yogorov's file. Yeah, she's not going to get what she wants from this one. He's got different orders than her. We'll see him again.

In the library, from behind a window and a curtain we see Finch shrug off his jacket and hang it on the coat rack. He's always so meticulous, everything in its place. Even his tie gets adjusted before he sits. His immaculate clothes are one thing he can still control and own about himself in his life. 

He's digging up the video on his computer. Behind him, we can see his list, long and horrifying, a colorful patchwork quilt of lost chances and lost lives. Beside it is a set of books, antiquarian looking, locked behind an ornate decorated metal grate with a chain. The top half are dark hardcovers, hard to see. The bottom half are similar, but more colorful, and each bears a library sticker with Dewey Decimal information on the bottom of its spine.

The footage he has is yellowy, but there are the Russians, getting out of their cars before they went in to find Charlie. "Where are you, Mr. Reese?" Finch asks the screen, hoping it will answer him. He's focused upon it, and we can hear him clicking away with his mouse. Click click click click, and there he is, just in sight at the edge of the screen, strolling into that alley beside the building. 

Finch rolls the tape back, zooms in, watches again. And then it's a few minutes later according to the video timecode, and out comes Reese again, only this time he's accompanying a balding man. That's their number. As of that instant at least, they were alive and safe. 

It's more information than Harold had before. It's something to go on, something to hope with, and the smallest amount of relief is visible in his face. 

The video rolls on, and someone else comes up. "Who are these guys?" There's a license plate. More breadcrumbs to follow. Crumbs, yes, but something. Finch pours all his focus into the video. It continues, and the scarred officer from earlier comes up to the vehicle. "And what's this cop doing with them?" Harold runs the footage back again and zooms in on the man. "NYPD." Finch brings one lightly trembling finger to run along his lips to ponder this new development. Nothing good comes from this if the police are compromised now too. More intervention will be necessary, and Finch delves deeper into the team in his own right.

"Detective Fusco," the man says over the scratchy phone line as it plays in the library.

"Hello, Detective. I need to talk to you about our mutual friend." This is the beginning of "mutual friend", the only euphemism for Reese more common than the Man in the Suit. Finch's voice is quiet, cautious but firm.

"Who's this?" Fusco asks from the crime scene. He switches hands with the phone. "And who the hell is our mutual friend?"

"I seem to recall you were going to take him to _Oyster Bay_ once upon a time..." That gets Lionel's attention.

"So you're his guy."

"No, Detective, I think that's your role." Finch always makes it clear. He's the one in charge. "I've lost contact with him." Finch is pacing in the library, past the expandable metal barriers and the old foggy glass paned interior windows. He is holding his lower back, his muscles tense and sore. "Do you have any idea where he and the witness are now?"

"Yeah, somewhere in Brighton Beach. The Russians opened fire on them in broad daylight. Those two are going nowhere fast with that type of heat on them."

Finch talks to the air. "Unfortunately, the Russian mafia may not be our only problem. I need you to run a license plate for me."

"Yeah, sure, pal. I'll help you out... if you tell me what the hell it is I'm doing." Fusco is starting to really lean into doing the right thing and doing it well, but he's always doing it blindfolded and bumbling through.

"It relates to your case. That's all you need to know."

"If I hear anything about our friend, how do I get in touch with you?"

"You don't," Finch says flatly. Not yet, at least. "I'll find you, Detective." And thus ends the first contact of Finch with Fusco, a partnership that will last the years.

By the building Reese and Charlie are hiding inside, the Russians are debating. The hothead son wants to just go in. "I'm telling you, I winged him." But his calmer brother wants to wait, go back to their father and regroup. They made a mutual avoidance deal with the Bulgarian tweakers inside. Going into the building would break the deal. But they can wait outside at all the exits.

Meanwhile, inside, John is assessing their situation and it's not looking good. There isn't much ammo left in his clip. And Charlie is slumping down on the couch, his eyes slipping closed.

"I need you to stay awake, Charlie," Reese says as he peers through the peephole, trying to get all the surveillance of their area he can. "Don't want you to go into shock."

Charlie shuffles himself back into a more vertical position. He takes a breath and decides a conversation is the only way he can stay awake. "So how did you wind up doing... whatever it is you do, John?"

"It's... complicated. What about you?" He walks back from the door. They don't have much security, but if he wants to keep this guy alive, engaging him is probably the best way. "Did you always want to be a teacher?"

"No, it was sort of a career shift." That's one way of putting it. Charlie is anxious as John bends over him to take a better look at his wound again. Reese is careful, keeps a hand gently supporting Charlie's back. It hurts him to see a caring person suffer. "I came to like the kids a lot. A lot of their parents are affiliated with the Russian mob, so I try to give them other options."

John watches him, sad for this kind man who fell into this terrible situation. He can't imagine it, such a simple life of teaching children, no violence, no bloodshed. Just learning and human connection. Reese's life is based on severing human connections. "They're lucky to have you."

"Only the ones I get out of the life and into college." An interesting thought that Elias, in trying to weaken his enemies, really did help children grow out of this terrible situation and move onto better lives. It may not have been for good reasons, but he really did end up helping some people.

"What about the kids who don't make it?" Reese looks so miserable. They are trapped, just like the kids unable to escape the gravity of the world they happened to be born into. 

Charlie sighs. "Probably the ones shooting at us." John turns back to him. Charlie smiles a little up at him.

"Don't go anywhere," Reese says. 

"What? Wait, where, where are you going?" Charlie is scared of being left alone.

John finally smiles a little back himself. "To find us a pharmacy." 

Charlie would love to stay with John, his protector, but he can't do anything but sit and breathe.

Somewhere under a squealing train in Brighton Beach, Fusco is getting a hotdog, because of course he is. Finch limps up behind him in his pinstripes and pocket square, looking down with disdain at Fusco's nutritional decision making skills.

"You should be careful about your cholesterol intake, Detective."

Recognizing the voice, Fusco shrugs. "What, are we dating?" An awkward introduction to each other in person. Finch just walks on, forcing Lionel to follow as he eats. 

"Do you have the information I asked you for?" This is bold and dangerous on Finch's part. He has been very reluctant to trust anyone, Fusco in particular and for good reason, but he's listened to Fusco gradually come around to them, to helping, to being on the side of the angels. He will make this face to face effort, risking himself because Reese is risking himself too. If John trusts this man, Harold will trust John's judgement.

"You're the boss, huh?" If Finch isn't working for Reese, then it has to be the other way around, and Finch certainly carries himself like upper management. "The voice on the other end of the phone?" Finch peers at him side eye and says nothing. The voice is a lot less talkative in person. 

Fusco's run the plate, and it's a dead end. "Hey, let me ask you something." He brushes his hand against Finch's arm to stop him so they can talk face to face. "Who are you trying to track down, Mr. Friend of a Friend?"

"The Russians aren't the only criminal operation looking for Charlie Burton."

That gets Lionel's attention. "You saying this plate belongs to Elias?"

"Maybe. You mentioned in your report that the victim spoke to Mr. Burton before he expired."

"Whoa! What do you mean? You read my report? How– How did you read my report?" Fusco will learn quickly the truth that there are no secrets around Harold Finch. But he doesn't want them for himself. He only has to know everything because it's the only way he can save the numbers and keep John and himself alive to save more.

"Doesn't matter, Mr. Fusco. What matters is that whatever message Benny was passing along, it means a great deal to Elias."

Fusco realizes both sides are trying to kill Charlie for different but equally deadly reasons. "Not his lucky day, is it?"

"Indeed." Finch pulls out a paper from his pocket, asks for Fusco to report the car stolen, then send the report to the email address on the paper. Then he turns to walk away, but Fusco yells after him.

"Hey, you heard from our mutual friend?"

Harold turns back around. "What, are you worried about him, Detective?" Finch certainly is.

Lionel shrugs. "Let's go with curious." So... yes.

"No." Finch walks away, then speaks softly, fearfully, only to himself. "No word from him."

In the building, the tweakers are filling little plastic baggies with meth crystals. They're discussing their profits when Reese walks in, looking serious and concerned.

"Hello, fellas," he says, casual as ever. "Can I borrow some of your drugs?" LOL. It's always "fellas" when John's talking to people about to give or receive a beating. 

The tweakers are pretty amazed by this suited weirdo wandering up to them with this of all requests. Guy on the couch can't believe it, and the standing guy decides to pull a knife. 

As usual, John looks kindly on his future victims, tries to talk them out of their inevitable painful defeat. "Oh, no. Easy, fella. I'm not looking for a fight." Reese is never looking for a fight. If he could never fight again, he would gladly stop. But he can never stop. His talent for it is his gift and his punishment.

Tweaker doesn't take you don't have to get your face punched in for an answer. "Looks like you found one anyway." He takes a few hopeless swings before John just easily tosses him into a table full of glassware that shatters noisily. Idiot gets off the table with a pipe, but that only earns him a quick back kick to the gut, and he bounces off of a chain link divider behind him. Mr. Couch goes for a gun under some newspaper comics on the coffee table.

John tries again to warn him away. "Don't do it. I'm telling you now." As frequently happens, a TV is loudly announcing sports (in this case, wrestling) as Reese knocks some idiots to the dust. He easily grabs the guy's wrists and throws him down across the table and to the ground, taking his gun in the process. There's a few more bullets he can use right there, excellent.

The tweakers writhe helplessly on the floor as John tosses some baggies of necessities into a white five gallon paint bucket. Before he leaves, Reese turns back around to the accidental pharmacists. "Thank you," he says politely, although it's not clear they're even still conscious to hear him. 

Szymansky is going over the facts about the Russians and Elias with Carter, faces and names on a board. There have been a lot of vengeance killings. 

"No one knows where Elias gets his information. He's always one step ahead of all of them. And us." Sounds like someone else we know.

When Szymansky wonders why Brighton Beach of all places, Carter's there with the answer. Marlene Elias and the kitchen knife in 1973. "I think Elias is the Don's kid."

"So the Don's bastard son... came to clean up?"

"Claim his birthright?" They're both pretty unsettled by what is unfolding before them.

In the building, John is doing emergency medic work with Charlie, who's in some serious pain at this point. He's trying to keep it under control, but he's struggling. At least he is until John works some of his magic.

"Ohhh... What is _that_?" Charlie breathes in long awaited relief.

"Cocaine." He's just sprinkling it on. It's what the stuff was originally used for, after all. Reese's hands are bloody but for a rare occasion, it's from helping, not hurting.

Charlie half chuckles. "Guess there's a first time for everything." John keeps working on him, clever and resourceful as ever. "Is that glue?" Of course it is. 

"Yeah. Nothing like over the counter polymer to close a wound in a pinch." John's bedside manner is pretty good, friendly and calm, even if his work isn't exactly professional grade. John would have been an excellent nurse. Maybe he is in some alternate dimension where he was never dragged down into the black hole of violence.

"You learn all this in hero training?"

A bit of a grimace. "Something like that." Not exactly hero training, unfortunately. John was made a weapon when all he ever wanted to be was a shield. Much like the Machine.

Charlie is impressed, a bit moved by the amount of effort this stranger is putting in to help him, save him. "Thank you."

Reese doesn't know what to do with gratitude. He tosses his head, considering and dismissing. "Sure..."

But Charlie covers the hands working on him with his own. "No, really. Thank you." He locks eyes with Reese. "If it wasn't for you, I'd be dead right now."

John knows he's right. But it's not enough. It will never be enough. He keeps working, keeps atoning.

"You ever use one of these?" Charlie reflexively shies away when Reese pulls out a black pistol. 

"Don't you think it would be better if you kept it?"

"Just... in case." Poor Reese. He wants to give this man a fighting chance, any kind of chance, if something happens to him first. There's such pleading in his gaze.

"The last time I held a gun I shot cans with one of my foster dads. Accidentally killed a bird, not my favorite childhood memory." Now there's an interesting hint about "Charlie". We know Elias had many foster parents and it never went well. Wonder if this story is true.

"It's simple, look. Safety's there, just load the magazine in like this, rack it." He hands the readied gun over into Charlie's hesitant fingers. "Simple."

Charlie sighs. He's not holding the gun in any way to use it. "You really think we can get out of here?"

"We have a hell of a lot better chance than we did 20 minutes ago." He's gently smiling, reassuring. John is so tender when he is caring for someone.

Outside, the Russians are meeting the Bulgarians. They agree to work together to find Reese and Charlie because John took their drugs. Everyone loads up with weapons.

"Somebody told me they're hiding out on the fourth floor. And one of them's already bleeding." Hothead brother looks knowingly at his bearded sibling. _Told you._

Night's falling and John is getting desperate. He searches along the walls. He hands Charlie a coat and tells him to put it on while he keeps looking.

"If I can find a line that's still operating... we can make a call." He's found a hammer somewhere, maybe the tweakers' pharmacy. As Charlie gingerly eases into the coat, Reese smashes into the drywall to discover a bundle of wires.

"Wow, I thought I was the only one who still had a hard line," Charlie says, smiling.

"I was hoping there was someone in this building as old-fashioned as you, Charlie." Hmm. He is old fashioned in some ways, and brand new in others. Elias is the blend of old and new power.

"I'm sorry I got you into this mess." He genuinely is. Charlie is grim. He knows this is bleak, desperation at best.

"It's okay," John says. "It's my job." He doesn't look back, just keeps on fiddling with the wires. He's a bit out of breath from all the hammering.

"It's a dangerous career choice."

"That's the second time today I've heard that." Yes, and from Elias' counterpart in many ways. John notices. "It's funny. You remind me of him." What reminds him? The bookishness, the intelligence, the gentleness and kindness, the will to help? Unfortunately, only some of those things are true for the man next to him now.

Et voila, it's a dial tone. They're both pleased as John dials. 

Finch is at his desk at the ready and he jumps to pick up on the first ring.

"Finch. I was just talking about you."

Finch has no time for chit chat, however sweet. He's deeply concerned. "Where are you, Mr. Reese?"

John leans toward the window, takes a peek out of old grimy curtains. "The double B housing projects. Fourth floor, north tower." 

That's information Finch can use. Finally he can put his skills toward helping. 

"Find me a way out of here, Finch. One that no one else will use." 

Reese doesn't need to ask, Finch is already on it. He's into the city planning office website in an instant, digging up old blueprints. While he fills in forms and types away, he asks, "How is Mr. Burton faring?"

"He's wounded, but stubborn." Charlie looks up, knowing they're talking about him. And John is complimenting him. "He'll pull through."

"The Russians aren't the only ones after him. I think Elias is looking for him too." But he's found the blueprints now, and there are service entrances. He squints as he figures what's best and gives directions. "Can you make it there?"

"We've got no choice. Tell Fusco to meet us at Pier 11 at 7 am. We'll be on the East river ferry."

Finch's voice trembles as John hangs up. "Be careful, Mr. Reese."

And now Charlie knows John's boss' name. John picks Charlie up. They have places to be. He guides him down hallways, keeping a tight grip on Charlie's good arm while also trying to watch the angles for the killers. It doesn't take long to hear them searching. They'll have to go another way. But that way has voices too.

"What now?" Charlie says, knowing they're trapped like mice.

But John never gives up, no matter how dire the situation seems. "Wait here." And he's knocking on a random door, hand at his back for his gun. This one has a man yelling back, sounding grumpy, asking who's there. He'll have to try another.

This one is empty, so John quickly works on the lock, but a voice calls to them, just down the way. "Mr. Burton?" It's a kid.

"Will?"

The teenager is immediately suspicious as he walks toward them. "What are you doing?"

Charlie's going to have to get them out of this one. John follows, tentative. 

"Came in looking for a shortcut, and we just, uh..." He points back at Reese. "This is my friend, by the way." Friend now, perhaps later. But in between... "We just got lost."

They can all hear the searchers coming. Charlie smiles, trying to be casual, but the kid's not stupid. "Come on. My dad's not home. You can hide in here."

At the library, Finch finally has the stolen vehicle report from Fusco to his burner account a3re@x7anonz.com. He looks at some schematics, then the picture of the man and the SUV again. He makes a call. Vehicle Recovery Services picks up.

"Yeah, this is Detective Fusco, shield number 7645. I'm... trying to turn on the locator on a stolen vehicle." He gives the information needed, then tenses, waiting to see if his fakery has worked. Of course it has.

"Thank you, Detective. How can I help you?"

Now they have a GPS track on the SUV. 

"... _And_ the microphone." Finch knows how to get what he wants as long as what he wants is information.

At the kid's apartment, Reese is nervous by the door, watching for their followers, but there's nothing else to be done. 

"Thought you and your dad moved out of here," Charlie says to the boy.

"Not yet. He said we will as soon as he gets a job." Oof. 

"Yeah, times are tough right now. I'm sure he'll get one soon." They both know that's not true, but it's the ritual everyone has to go through. Charlie points at him to lighten the mood. "Just don't move out of my school district, okay?"

The kid smiles. So does Reese a little in the corner. He loves dedication and care. 

"You do your homework?" Charlie picks up a copy of the Count of Monte Cristo, open on the table. A tale of a man hidden behind a mask. Betrayal and vengeance.

"Yep, all of it."

"What'd you think?"

"Edmond's cool. A survivor, you know." John listens, shadowed in the corner. "Even though he got his revenge, some bad stuff still stuck with him." It always does.

"Yeah, you're a smart kid, Will. You just need to show up to class more."

"I'm trying." Poor kid. He's probably keeping his family afloat on his own. God, it's so hard to be poor.

"That's all any of us can do, right?" Charlie notices the game on pause on the TV, the kid's only outlet for his frustration, his only source of fun in this quagmire. "Zombies."

"They're taking over the universe."

Charlie shrugs, nods. "Yeah, can't have that." He connects really well to the kids, even if it's ultimately fake. He really is helping, however incidentally. Kid shakes his head in joking agreement and John smiles for real this time.

Finch is out and about now, tracking the SUV's GPS from his own car, a black and nondescript sedan, of course. He peers at men getting out through the lens of his zoom camera. There's the cop with the scar again, now in his street clothes.

"Who are you?" Finch wonders aloud. He furiously takes pictures. "You're that cop," he says, restating the obvious. The guy gets in and Finch has audio.

"Word is the Russians are inside the Double Bs. We better get to them first." They drive off. 

Finch compares his pictures. It's definitely the same man. "Is that you, Elias?" he wonders.

In the kid's apartment, things are going south fast. They can hear voices outside. "You seen these guys? We're looking for them." It's only a matter of time now.

John has his gun out, pointed at the door, ready to pounce. Charlie winces when the inevitable comes. They're knocking. 

"Open up, or we're coming in."

The kid nods to his teacher and stands. Brave one, this Will. Everybody is on their feet as he opens the door as far as the chain latch will hold. "What do you want?"

"Hey, little man." It's the bearded Russian brother, Peter. "You all alone in there?"

"What's it look like?"

Beardo scoffs. "Why don't you let me in so I can make sure?"

Kid's eyes narrow. "My papa taught me better than to let strangers inside our place, especially punks." Oh, this kid has guts.

Even Peter is impressed, but he makes his own move. His enormous gun hits the door along with his hand so the kid can see it. It does its job, his eyes are on it. John is ready, his own pistol at the wood of the door, ready to shoot through it at any second. "Is that right?"

"That's right. He also said that _Vory_ are supposed to show respect to one another." Will doesn't back down an inch. He's the hero of this episode.

"Your papa's a smart man." Not as smart as his son. "You be good, kid." Peter backs away.

Charlie blows out the breath he'd been holding in a long stream. Kid looks at Reese beside him, then Charlie.

"Thanks, Will."

Kid is cool, acts like it's nothing. "It's all good, Mr. Burton. You're the best teacher I've got."

It's too much for Charlie. He's waning. He leans in, drifts toward the couch to half collapse upon it.

"Charlie..." John walks toward him, bends down. "Can you make it to the service stairs?"

"I'll try, but the painkiller sort of wore off." 

"Why don't you just use the old entrance?" Seriously, this kid is the hero forever. "They closed it down a few years ago. The stairs got all rotted." John can't believe it. This is even better than what Finch had.

"It's down the hall. It's back the way that you came." 

John loves this kid, resourceful, brave, and kind. "Thanks." He picks Charlie up again and pulls him toward the hallway.

"I owe you one," Charlie says as they get ready to head outside.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Burton," says Will, smiling.

"Yeah. Yeah, we'll see you tomorrow." That's a hopeful thought, tomorrow. May we live to see it and each other. He turns to leave but John holds up a hand. The searchers are passing by another hall. Then it's time, and Charlie and Will share a nod. Here's to you, Will, hero of this day and all the days to come.

John's in full action mode moving them down the hallway, gun out and ready. They have to duck into a doorway to avoid another group. The men have found their old hiding place. 

"Wherever you are, we're going to find you. And we're going to end you." 

But they don't find John and Charlie, pressed inside the wall itself. John doesn't have to use the gun still aimed out at the killers.

But the hothead son lingers, suspicious, as the other leaves. He's about to go too, but Reese grabs him by the collar.

"Looks like you got left behind." And now they have a hostage.

Meanwhile, Carter and Szymansky are strolling into Russian mafia dad's ludicrously opulent office. His accent is equally ludicrously opulent. 

"Your son Peter's wanted for questioning," Carter says. They want to know where he is, but Dad plays dumb about the whole thing.

"You seem to know a lot for someone who is here to ask me questions."

Carter, as ever, tries to appeal to human decency. "Mr. Yogorov, we don't want any more bloodshed." But no, the world will not help her help others as it should and neither will this mafia trash.

Dad wants a warrant, but they keep trying.

"There are no winners in this war, Ivan. Only dead soldiers," Szymansky pleads. He cares like Carter does. "Are you ready to lose your sons too?" One of them is already a hostage at gunpoint.

"If I knew to what you were referring, I'd say this so-called war was started by this coward Elias, not me. He's the one who comes to my neighborhood, stealing from me, killing my people. Not the other way around." And that's the best they're going to do. Carter gives him a hard side eye as she walks out.

Punk son is getting his pockets rifled by John in the apartment as Charlie looks on. He's got a phone, nice. "Mind if I borrow this for a moment?"

"Screw you."

"It's a bad move to insult your hostage taker, Lazlo," John says as he dials. He tucks the phone between his ear and his shoulder to keep his hands free. "Keep your mouth shut or I'll shut it permanently. Let's go." Charlie looks nervous as he follows behind.

"Finch, it's me. Get word to Carter that her bodega shooters are inside the Double Bs."

Finch's voice is tinny over the line. "Of course. And I'll make sure Detective Fusco meets you and the witness at the ferry." And that's it, they've reached the old entrance.

The sun is coming up as they exit. John tells his hostage they're going across the river.

Finch is listening to the SUV audio still, and the news is bad. They got a text about the meeting at Pier 11. They're on their way. Finch stands, makes a decision, and moves on it.

Carter and Szymansky have the bearded brother in custody. Szymansky's happy, but curious. "Find out who called it in?"

"I have an idea," she says. She sure does.

Fusco's waiting by the water, gets a call. It's Finch, of course, pacing and angry in the library.

"And I was _just_ starting to believe that we could trust you, Detective. I'm disappointed."

"What are you talking about?"

"Elias' men are on their way to meet our friends at the ferry!"

"How the hell'd they find out?"

"I was going to ask you."

"Hey, you're blaming me for this?"

"Then who told them?"

"Listen, there's no way I woulda–" and Fusco can't finish his defense because he's coldcocked upside the head and drops to the ground next to the man with the scar.

"Detective? Are you there?" Finch's voice calls to no one as the man picks up the phone. He hangs it up and drops it again to get out his more useful tool, a pistol. The ferry is on its way.

On the boat, as they pass under a bridge, Reese and Charlie are talking. "When we get you across the river, I'm going to hand you off to my detective." _My._ Cute, although I don't think Fusco would take too kindly to it. Not that he'd take too kindly to anything at the moment, unconscious on the concrete. "Now you can trust him," John says as Charlie raises his eyebrows in disbelief. John, leans in, speaks softer. "Charlie, I need you to testify."

Charlie looks over at their hostage, tied to a pole. "One thing I know for sure... After everything we went through last night, I don't want to see these cretins running around my town ever again." John pats his arm, grateful.

Carter's got the other brother in interrogation. "Peter, we've got you on camera. We've got witnesses that you and your brother were shooting up the streets in Brighton Beach." But he's giving nothing.

The ship's windows reflect the water at daybreak. The Statue of Liberty stands tall in the distant horizon.

"It's a beautiful morning," Charlie says, smiling. "I have to thank you, John. Tell you the truth, I didn't think I'd see another one."

Carter is laying out her theory about dead mafia guy Benny in the bodega being the next best thing to Elias. "Now you're trying to rub out the witness. The guy who saw your father's face."

"We heard from a source that Elias was supposed to be at the bodega that night."

"He was meeting Benny."

"Yeah. But when we showed up... Benny was all we saw. Found out what really went down after the owner called us. He said there was another guy." Carter can't believe it. They came AFTER? That means...

"Hey! What are you?" hostage son shouts at Reese. "Corrupt P.D.? Gun for hire?" John closes his eyes. He would never think of himself that way. "What kind of guy takes money to protect a scumbag like your boss here?" Charlie and John look at each other. "You think he's going to testify? After everything he's done? He's tearing this town apart!"

John's heard enough, walks toward him, tired and annoyed. "What are you talking about?"

"You don't... know who he is, do you?" And Reese's face starts to drop. "What he's capable of?"

Carter's having basically the same conversation with the other brother. "You really don't get it, do you? You honestly think we'd go to all this trouble for a witness?" He scoffs, and Carter's jaw drops as she puts it together too.

"You're in the middle of a situation that you don't even understand," says John's hostage.

And Elias raises his voice from behind. "Don't make me shoot you, John." And John's heart falls to the floor. He closes his eyes, distraught at the revelation. All this, and _this_ is who he saved.

Elias holds the gun John gave him out in front of him. "Drop your weapon and kick it to me, please." John does what he's told. It is agony for him.

"I thought you didn't like guns," says Reese, staring grimly at the deck.

"You know, sometimes you have to do things you don't like."

John turns around. "Like teaching history to the children of your enemies?"

"Three years, I watched them, cleaning up after the children of those pigs. It's a good amount of time to learn what makes your enemies tick, what makes them weak." He raises his voice up to sullen hostage son. "You know all the secrets you and your family tried to hide, Lazlo, I learned all about from your flesh and blood? Your children hate you almost as much as I do."

Lazlo spits at the ground, defiance in his eyes. That is the only answer he will give.

"Tie yourself to the railing, John, nice and tight. I know how capable you are of getting out of difficult situations." Yes, that really is his greatest skill, ingenuity, getting out of difficult situations. It's the one of most use in his work with Finch and the Machine. "On your knees, please."

As he obeys, John gets answers at the very least. "You were meeting Benny at the bodega that day, weren't you? The shooters were looking for you."

"Yeah, the benefits of no one knowing who you are or what you look like." Finch enjoys those frequently. "That's gone now, I suppose. It's time to evolve. I'm ready for the next step."

He cocks the gun and raises it at Lazlo. 

"Go ahead," Lazlo says, frowning and afraid but still defiant. "I'd rather die than see you running my city."

"You know what Benny said before he died? He said Veni, Vidi, Vici. I came, I saw, I won. He said your almighty _Bratva_ was already crumbling. He said we'd already won. This is for Benny." He raises the gun higher. Lazlo braces himself.

"Elias," John calls from the ground, warning him with his true name. "If you kill him..."

The boat horn sounds and Elias uses the opportunity to shoot Lazlo in the leg. He screams in pain and drops as far as he can given his hands still tied high to the pole.

"I'm not going to kill him. I'm just going to send a message. You tell your papa, Lazlo, if he gets out of town tonight, I'll let him live." Lazlo grunts, red from the pain. "Brighton Beach belongs to me now."

Elias bends down toward Reese on his knees. "I thought about killing _you_ , John. But I realize that that would seem ungrateful." John looks up at him with total despise. "Besides, how do you take the life of someone so talented?" That he is indeed. Recognizing and appreciating all of John's talents is another thing that Finch and Elias share. "I could really use a guy like you in my organization."

Reese purses his lips. That's the answer he expected, but Elias is still disappointed. "I wish you luck, John. If you stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours."

"What if I don't?" 

Elias stands back up. "Then we'll meet again under less pleasant circumstances." He bows his head, a small gesture of goodbye and respect, and he walks away onto the pier to meet his man, who shakes his hand, happy to see him again. They hug and walk away together. Scarface puts him in the SUV and they drive away.

Elsewhere on the pier, Fusco is dabbing at his bleeding nose on a bench, spitting blood as Finch limps toward him, contrite. 

"You believe me now?" he says, looking up, angry. That he does. Finch learned the hard way today that some trust is actually warranted. His natural suspicion was proven wrong. They do have an ally. He should have trusted John in trusting Fusco.

"I'm sorry, Detective." He hands Fusco one of his fancy handkerchiefs from his pocket and the detective snatches it away, still furious.

They walk to John, who is free now and walking up the pier himself. He's rubbing at his wrists, freshly untied.

"Nice to see you, Lionel. Your suspect is tied to the railing."

Fusco's so pissed off at both of them. Since John's walking away, he barks at Finch instead. "Tell him you're welcome." 

"Couldn't have known about... Charlie," Finch says when he catches up to John, trying to console him, but it's of little use. "The Machine found a man who was targeted for death. We just didn't know that he was also a killer."

John shakes his head. "It's my fault he's out there, Finch."

"It's not yours alone," Harold replies without a second's pause. They are in this together, come what may.

John stops, turns around, so upset. "We just saved a man whose only goal in life is revenge." Finch stands still and straight, accepting his frustration. "He spent years studying his enemies through their own children."

What is there to say? Finch tilts his head what little he can. "John, we have limited information. We knew when we began this that we might make... mistakes." He turns stiffly away from the water, gesturing with his body. "But we have to go now." He appeals to John's – their – purpose. "We have more people to help. More _numbers_."

"And how many of those numbers will come up because we saved one man's life?" There is only fury and pain in John, all justified. He walks away from Finch, who can say nothing. There is indeed nothing to say. He is completely right.

In Russian mafia dad's office, a black gloved hand punches numbers into the security pad. It's our friend with the scar, and he puts two holes in Ivan's chest before he can make any move of his own. He dies in his fancy wood and leather chair with his eyes open. Scarface checks his pulse to make sure it's gone, and then he's gone as well.

Elias is walking up the boardwalk by the beach. Scarface calls from behind. "Boss. It's done." 

Elias turns around, satisfied but knowing. "No, it's just beginning. Veni, vidi, vici." He smiles at his success. He won today. He and his black coated thugs walk away together.

* * *

#### Thoughts

  * John starts realizing how fond he is of Finch and how protective he feels toward him when he sees so much of Harold in Charlie, but that makes everything all the worse when Charlie reveals his true face, his true cruelty, and betrays him. John has to ask himself, is Harold capable of betrayal like that? The trust they were building is damaged by the resemblance and the terrible outcome of their intervention.




	9. POI 1x08 - Foe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John has sympathy for a devil made by a different government and wonders if there is any way back or even forward for people like him.

### POI 1x08 - Foe

#### Landmarks

  * Fusco saves John's life for the first time
  * In the past, Kara gives John Reese his name and starts hollowing him out into a weapon



#### Injuries

  * **Reese**
    * Knocked out by having his carotid arteries intentionally blocked
    * Extensive needle-based torture to his elbow while tied to a chair



* * *

The Machine is listening to German voices. "What do we assume he knows?" "Assume he knows everything."

It's Grand Central station. Everyone is bustling about as an elderly man in a suit walks in. He sees a younger man, also suited, and he knows he has to stay out of sight. The younger man has an old black and white picture in his hand, trying to link the past to today.

In the library, Finch is in a plaid vest, flipping through a book he's found on the endless shelves. "No thanks, I don't drink coffee," he says as Reese walks in with a holder and two cups. 

"Sencha green tea," Reese says, presenting his prize. "One sugar." He's been learning, gathering what bits and pieces he can. The tea is both a show of the intelligence he's gathered and a small act of thoughtful kindness.

Finch's book snaps shut and finds a space above the others on the shelf. "You've been paying attention." Uncomfortable or not, he's not going to turn down his favorite. He immediately opens it and takes a sip.

"Relax, Finch, it's just tea. I haven't guessed your favorite color yet."

Finch doesn't take the bait, just turns to get to work. "New number." It's a German, the old man we saw earlier. Everything seems super clean, except...

"Wait a minute." Reese looks up from the papers. "Are these dates right?"

"You noticed. Negel hasn't made a single electronic transaction in his own name since December of 1987."

"So where has he been for 24 years?"

"And why is he back?"

Looking at the facts, Reese laughs a little. "Spycraft 101. This is an alias. I've used dozens of them. I think Negel is a cover." He stands, prepared. "So, where do we start?" He's always ready for his next assignment.

Finch has discovered one thing this Negel has is a cemetery plot in the Bronx. Reese is off to find out why a man like this would have such a thing. But Finch grabs his coat first.

"If we're dealing with a spy from the 1980s, I know of someone who can provide us with the kind of pre-digital information we need. Things I can't find on computers." Anything digital is easy pickings for Finch, but real text and pictures take more work. Hard copies, physical books, and papers. It's part of the reason he loves books. Together with the digital, he can have access to virtually all the information in the world.

And we're at an antiquarian bookshop with him. The owner is another one of those Hey It's That Guys. His books are awfully pristine for antiquarians, but that's set dressing for you. It's a pretty fancy shop. I'm jealous.

The owner pats a stack he's brought out for Finch as he walks up. "All first editions. The best available on German history."

Finch leafs through one. "The entire span of the Cold War would do it, but specifically the 1980s." He doesn't look up as the man trundles away. "And I'll be needing something more precise than books."

The man looks nervous, strolls back, laughs a little. "I'm not sure what you mean." Oh yes, you do.

"How about the Soviet submarine schematics you sold back to Russian intelligence last year?" Now Finch looks up, his poker face on. _Here's my hand. I know I have you beat._ "You registered that income with the IRS, FBI?" He looks about the store, cold as ice, as the man blanches before him. "Be hard to run this store from prison, don't you think?"

Yeah, he's beat. The open sign flips over. He'll only have one customer today.

Meanwhile, Reese is in another remarkably viewtacular cemetery. The plot in question has already been dug up. Well, that's interesting. There's something shiny in the dirt. A coin. Reese squints into the distance, considering.

Back at the bookshop, they're going downstairs to the owner's private stock. He's talking excitedly about the Stasi and East Germany, the "greatest surveillance state the world has seen". You're talking to the wrong man, bub. 

"I've read about them," Finch says as he sits among all the piles of books. "I'm a sucker for surveillance." The guy keeps going on about all the things the Stasi had, but Finch is only after "a name to go with an alias." And he gets what he came for: Ulrich Kohl. He was a hunter of East German defectors.

The guy is still excited. "...and he neutralized them before they could talk."

"Neutralize." Finch says the word like it tastes foul in his mouth. Any euphemism for murder does. 

He goes to leave with the folders of information, but the man taps his arm. "Um... How did you know about the submarine schematics?"

"Told you," he says, in plain honesty. "I'm a sucker for surveillance." Guy looks like he's going to throw up.

At the library, Finch is going over his findings with Reese, who is still in the cemetery. This Kohl had a wife who died in a car accident in 1987. He himself vanished from the earth along with East Germany in 1989.

"Well, he's here now," Reese says. The cemetery plot was a stash. IDs, weapons, money. Just like John used to use.

Old man Kohl is getting a gun ready as he walks down a hallway. The door he knocks on opens to another old man. When shown the picture of the dead wife, the man finally understands. "It... can't be you." But it is, and it's a silenced bullet to the chest. It doesn't kill him, though, and Kohl closes the door behind them to talk.

It's 2006 now, John's just starting out when he was a spy. We're in Russia and it's Kara's voice we hear. 

"You're the new guy, right? Let's go somewhere private so we can talk."

They're dressed to the nines. We hear a party going on. She has a wine glass in her hand. He looks fresh-faced in his tuxedo. 

"You're Stanton, and I'm..."

"No," she says, hard. "You're not. The ID NCS gave you didn't pass muster, so you're nobody." He's following her around a room, maybe a basement. "Which means I get to name you." That pleases her very much. She looks him over. "Wilson, maybe." A pause. "No. You should have a drink." 

"I don't drink when I'm working." 

"No? Well, start. You tier one boys are all the same. Tense. Out here, tense gets us killed." She's not wrong. John is rod straight, serious. "In your old job, you were behind enemy lines for 6, 12 months? In this job, you never go back because there is no line to cross back over. Never was. Understand?" Yes, he will, although not for a while. And understanding it will crush him.

He nods, just slightly. She nods too, at a glass of champagne. "So you may as well get comfortable."

She makes small talk as he sits. It's not really small and it's not really talk. It's interrogation. She knows things and uses what she knows to hurt people. "When you were in transit, did you see any old friends?"

"No," he lies. "Why are you asking?"

She hands him why, an envelope with a picture of him with Jessica at the airport in it. It hurts his heart to see it again, that moment of failure, of loss.

"We know about the ex-girlfriend. Like I told you, you never go back." He is determined not to, thinking this is what's best for Jessica, what will keep her happiest and healthiest, even if it kills him to do it. He's wrong, so wrong, but he doesn't know that yet. He thinks the worst disaster is behind him. 

A door clicks, and we move back to the present.

Finch is pondering the East German Mark Kohl dropped, out of circulation since 1990. They're exotic now, but a rare coin exchange bought a bunch of them just today. There's our man. Finch traced the call to an apartment and Reese is there for more legwork.

Inside, there's blood and a man slumped in a chair. They're too late. The man's neck is covered in pinpricks, little needle marks. Malevolent acupuncture. Interrogation.

Finch has used the info he got from the bookseller to reconstruct Kohl's team. Kohl and a Steiler were triggermen, Wernick was their forger, and they reported to a case officer named Hauffe for orders. 

There's a beep. "Ah!" Finch limps stiffly toward the noise. The printer has a document for him, a lease naming the dead man.

Reese thinks the dead guy might have been a defector, and in the apartment he spots where a cabinet has scraped the wooden floor. It's been moved. Something may have been hidden. Sure enough, it's the guy's German documents and awards. His past life, buried under a floorboard but never forgotten. Kohl certainly never did. But this man was no defector – he was Kohl's teammate, the case officer.

"And he will kill again," says a voice from across the room. Reese is alone no longer. The young German man we saw earlier has a gun to John's back. "I don't know who you are or how you know to be here, but this is just the beginning." 

"Then this is going to be a long day." It's always a bad idea to pull a gun on John Reese. He swings around, knocks the gun out of the man's hands, and punches him backwards over a table. His own gun is out in an instant but he doesn't need it. The man is out cold. John kicks him over onto his back and rifles his pockets. It's not good news.

"Finch, I've got company. B.N.D., German intelligence."

At the station, Fusco's phone rings and he takes off his little wireframe reading glasses to answer.

"Anonymous tip for you, Lionel," Reese says in his most passive cool drawl. 

Fusco is instantly nervous, curls and turns around to talk low. "You gotta stop calling me here."

Nobody ever cares what Lionel wants and John has business. He mentions the dead body and the fact this is probably just the first they'll see today. Crouched down, he looks at his captive. "I left you a little care package at the scene. I need you to find out whatever he knows."

"Yeah, well, I can't do anything until someone calls in a crime." 

"You'll get a call. Shots fired." 

"Were there shots fired?"

And his prediction is instantly true. Fusco starts and pulls the phone away from his ear at the sound of three bullets. 

"There were now." Oh, John, you showy fool.

The Machine is watching our killer on the street. She always is watching, learning, knowing. It's the doing she's unable to manage without help.

The next target is probably Wernick, the forger, now a Wall Street suit. Kohl's entire team is living under aliases in New York. It was surely convenient for everyone involved until it was convenient for their would-be murderer.

"The perfect place to disappear, right, Finch?"

Finch ignores that completely and focuses on the task, the incongruity of Kohl killing not defectors but his own team. 

Reese immediately guesses revenge. As always, he thinks of lost love. "The wife's death?" He goes over the details, car crash the same year Kohl disappeared. "And I know a staged accident when I see it." Why does John see it and Kohl doesn't? Too close to it? Or was it that Kohl was fully an assassin, whereas John was a jack of all the dark trades?

The death artist formerly known as Wernick is texting in a cafe when he feels a sting at his neck. He pulls out a long strange needle. He knows what it is. Kohl sits down across from him, cold.

"Still with the needle, I see. What is it coated with?"

"Something fast. It's the least I could do for an old colleague." He's got a picture, a polaroid he pushes across. It's a woman smiling. "You remember? My Anja?" Reese was right, of course.

Wernick does remember, but what can he do to bring her back now that she's dead? The man has his own question, what happened to Ulrich.

"I paid. For my sins. For yours. For the team. The people who caught me kept me in a hole, but I never stopped thinking, planning."

"It was long ago. I let myself forget."

"I did not have that luxury." Spies often don't get to slide into cushy retirement.

"What we did was wrong. You'll go after Steiller next. Then be at peace, my old friend."

Wernick collapses and Kohl walks away. He has more business to settle. 

Reese comes in, but he's late. He leaves without a word. The medics wheel Wernick outside and put him in an ambulance... that immediately drives away without them. Oops. 

In some alley, John stops the ambulance to talk to the man dying in the back. 

"It's hydrocyanic acid. Now, they're going to find us in four minutes. I can save you, but you need to talk."

Wernick wastes no time. He talks about giving the Americans Kohl in exchange for a new life in the US. This does not please John. Betrayal is the deepest sin to him. He's preparing the injections, but not in a hurry.

"You were his team," he says, glaring at the man on the gurney. "His friends. A soldier deserves better."

Wernick talks about Kohl trying to run with Anja to the Soviets, but "the Americans got her too." Reese wants more information about Steiller, the next target, but Wernick has passed out.

John is angry as he leaves the ambulance and reports back to Finch, standing and listening in the library.

"I kept the lawyer alive, but Kohl's not done yet. Kohl's team betrayed him and it got his wife killed." This is hitting every button John has. "They preserved themselves over him. This is as personal as it gets." For John too.

Reese has figured out that the men all were able to stay in contact by joining a German American social group. 

At the police station, Fusco is going over what he has with Carter. Two crime scenes and a senior citizen in a gray suit fleeing both locations.

"Wall Street... That's where the ambulance was jacked earlier, right?" As always, Carter is right on top of it all, making the connections. She's an excellent detective.

"You read the description of who jacked it?"

"My guy? How's he involved in this?" She looks in on the young German intelligence guy they have in interrogation. "Nice bruises. He say anything yet, like who kicked his ass sideways?"

They share a laugh. They both know who. _My guy_.

They go in to talk to the guy, tell him they know he's German intelligence, he just snarls at them as _polizei_ and barks some German no one understands. Carter works on him. "Two crimes. A very dangerous man at work, and one agent trying to stop a killer? Be a shame if we polizei couldn't help."

It works. She's good. He tells them the man's name is Kohl and he's a prisoner, "arrested in an operation between my government and yours, 24 years ago. He had become old. Feeble, they thought." So much for that. "There is nothing more important than putting him back where he belongs."

"Why not involve U.S. authorities?" Carter asks. Good question.

"He was jailed without trial. Kohl isn't supposed to exist. No one wants an international incident." Yeah, too late on that one, guy.

"Then help us. We want the same thing!" Maybe Carter would have been successful getting through to him through empathy and human connection, but here's the German consulate to end the whole conversation. The US State Department wants him extradited immediately.

Finch just cracked the German American group's site and he can't believe how primitive it was. "...wasn't even using an openSSH secure proxy. I cloned their login form in seconds." It's always wonderful that he gives all these details, and they're real. He's looking sharp as always even when no one can see him in the library in a raspberry vest and tan plaid tie.

Reese doesn't have time for this tech stuff. He's got wetwork to do. Finally Finch gives him a name, a construction worker with credit scores only back to 1988. John's on his way, but Finch has his phone number. They need to let him know the danger he's in as quickly as they can.

When the man answers, Finch stands from his chair to speak to the air. He uses the man's old German name, Steiller, which gives him pause but he still denies it. 

"There's no time for games. You need to listen." Harold licks his lips, deadly serious, locking eyes with the man if only in his imagination. "You remember Ulrich Kohl? He remembers you, just like he remembered all his old Stasi colleagues. He's on his way."

"That's impossible. You're speaking of a dead man." But here's that dead man coming out of the construction site elevator. Kohl backs his old teammate to the edge at gunpoint and the man tucks his phone in his pocket still connected with Finch. Unable to do anything but listen, Finch is rapt and horrified. 

They talk about the past, the wife, Kohl's brutality. Reese is listening to all of this in the car on his way. Their conversation is a dark reflection of John's own life, past and present. He's trying to reach them as quickly as he can.

"You were too good."

"I learned from the best. I learned from you. You were my friend. You knew me. You knew my wife. She trusted you as much as I did."

"You changed, Ulrich. I watched what the missions did to you, the... the darkness in your eyes. You believed in the killing."

"You trained me. You made me what I was. I believed in my country. I believed in you."

"We could not save you."

"So you left Anja and me to the hounds for some money and an apartment in New York City?"

"I had to get out!"

"I was strong. I survived. What they did to Anja, though... you will pay for that."

And then he drops the bomb. "Wait, Ulrich. There is something you don't know." Oh, no. As John climbs up the construction site stairs two at a time, Steiller makes a call. "I was the only one who knew." He hands the phone over.

Oh, god, it's Anja, answering on a cordless phone in her home. Kohl can't believe it. All this time, all this revenge, and Anja's been alive all the while. He can't bear to speak, and she hangs up when no one answers her hellos.

Finch can't believe all this either, it's stunning news. 

"She found me a few years after we all defected. She was more afraid of you than anyone, Ulrich. So you see, your revenge was all for nothing." Yeah, you're really not helping your own case here, guy. And he makes mistake #2 by trying for Ulrich's gun while he's still processing all this. He reaches for violence and so violence is what he gets. Kohl tosses him over the side and the man falls to his death. 

John arrives seconds too late. And he knows that Anja is next. They have to find her first. 

The German intelligence agent is leaving the station. Carter is frustrated. Fusco tries to cheer her up with the truth, or at least some of it.

"You still got your vigilante looking for the shooter, that's not bad news."

"You can't send a killer to catch a killer, detective."

"Hey, your guy still gets results." And that's why Fusco works for him ultimately, beyond the blackmail. Lionel believes in results, if not necessarily following all the rules to get those results. And he immediately takes out his phone to talk to _your guy_. It's a text about the German, info on the consulate car he's in.

Reese takes the text in the car while Finch is in the passenger seat. He's got his own idea about getting Fusco to send the GPS tracker number for the car. They're on a back street and Reese sets up in the middle of an empty road to prepare. He pops the trunk and hands Finch some equipment. Harold looks alarmed as John pulls out some enormous rifle from the trunk. 

"Mr. Reese, I'm highly uncomfortable being here." That's an understatement. 

"I'm highly uncomfortable having you here, but I need a spotter." John sets up his rifle on the hood of the car, all focus and resolve. He reaches back for whatever is in Finch's hand without looking. It's a huge magazine that he clips in. Finch peers through a little rangefinder, and starts calculating distance. He has to learn on the fly how to do this, but if there's anything Finch is good at, it's learning on the fly. He catches on fast, knowing to mention the wind angle and speed. 

"Very impressive, Finch." John gives credit where it's due. 

"What if you miss?" Finch looks scared, and puts his fingers in his ears to protect against the surely deafening noise about to blast in front of him.

"I wouldn't know. Never have." And he doesn't here, of course, blowing the car's engine out with one shot. It skids sideways to a stop. 

The German consulate lawyer gets out. "Stop! We have diplomatic immunity!"

"I'm not a diplomat." Shades of John and Harold's first full conversation. Neither of them are government. Harold never really, John not anymore. He pushes the agent into the driver's side of the car by his chest. His hand rises and falls with the man's quick, frightened breaths.

"Who are you?" he gasps.

"I'm the guy who still has time to save Anja Kohl. I know she's alive, but I need to know where."

Consulate man grumbles. "This man has nothing to say." 

He's not entirely accurate on that point. Agent grabs John's hand upon him, slipping him a tiny sliver of paper in the process. "There's nothing I can do," he says. He leans in close to John. "Save her if you can."

Reese walks away without another word. Back at the car, he hands Finch the paper. It's an address for an Anna Klein. It's exactly what they need. It's uh... convenient the guy had it on a small paper in easy reach. They speed away.

At a brownstone somewhere, Kohl walks up the stairs and disconnects the security camera. He creeps in and turns a corner, but at the table, it's not Anja. It's John, holding a gun.

"Anja isn't here, Kohl. She's safe, where you can't get to her." John notices the man's gun. He's impressed. "That's a Welrod, isn't it? Only 73 decibels when fired. But it won't stop me before I get to you." He stands. "And I lose my patience when I get shot." John loses his patience a lot.

He walks forward. "What's your plan, Kohl? You going to kill her too? Your own wife? You don't have a plan, do you?" He takes Kohl's gun easily from his hand, but sadly, he did have a plan, at least one for dealing with John. He grabs him by the throat.

"Your external carotid arteries." He's straining. Clearly crushing a man to death by the throat is hard work. "Obstruct both..." John drops to the floor. "And you wake up with quite the headache."

Driven in the back of some chauffeured town car, Finch is trying to talk to Anja. She can't believe what he's telling her at first, but then her memory of his brutality convinces her he's right. "He's coming for me, isn't he?"

"Yes. What's important now is getting you into police custody. There's a detective at the eighth precinct–"

But she stops him cold. She can't go yet. 

"It's safe there. I promise." He's doing his best, understanding how afraid this woman must be. She tells him she needs to make a phone call before anything else.

Back at Anja's house, John is elaborately tied to a chair, now down to his rolled up shirtsleeves. He's missing layers of his armor. Across the table, Kohl is impressed by modern tiny cameras. "The Stasi would have killed for this technology." I'm sure they would have. But he only has one real question. "Wo ist Anja?"

John's not talking, so Kohl doesn't stop. He talks about picking up things as you travel, skills, items. He unravels a small leather satchel of needles. "They all laughed at me when I learned to use these needles." He takes one out. "They didn't laugh for long."

Finally, John speaks, slowly and sounding tired. "I was, uh... bagged by an insurgent patrol when I was in Kandahar." He looks up at Kohl as he approaches. "They used electricity on me... for 16 hours." He has his own skills he's picked up in his travels. "All they wanted was my name."

"I don't care for your name," Kohl says and he gags John with a white cloth as he rambles on about the ulna nerve. "The largest nerve in the human body that is unprotected." John stares into the distance, preparing himself, removing himself from his body and the agony he is about to experience that Kohl is describing in detail. 

The needle goes into John's elbow, and he grunts through the pain. Kohl's still questioning him, although with the gag in, there's really not a lot John could say right now even if he wanted to. He closes his eyes, and slips back into a memory, those first early days with Kara.

"Relax," she says. "We're on the same team." That's not reassuring. Kara is on no one's team. But she's not talking to John at this point here anyway, she's talking to two suits coming in the room. There's a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of John, she has a glass of champagne. She smiles at the stiff men coming into this dark stone room, and tries to put them at ease. "Besides, where would I hide a gun in this dress?"

"You're Stanton, right?" At this point she is. Who knows who she was when she started. "Who's this?"

She looks over at John, taking him in up and down. "Haven't decided yet." John looks nervously at her. He is no one in this moment, out of his element. He won't be for long.

She and the men talk about some other agent Miller and the local taste for plum brandy over their preferred bourbon. Miller apparently got taken out. 

"Wasn't getting the job done. Word came down. Time to take the gloves off." She's comfortable with the brutality and finality of what their job means. John is clearly not. Comfortable or not, he has business to get to. 

They're looking into reports some Alim Assir was "in country" last week, maybe securing financing.

The suits are defensive. "We sent all of our intel in the pouch to Langley last week." Langley is FBI, which means... that locality that prefers plum brandy might not be as far away as it initially seemed.

John's not having any of that. "And Assir made it out of the country safely two days ago. We want to know how." Kara is watching, judging his performance at this first real test.

"Like we said, he must have paid customs a fortune." Suit #2 takes a swig from his huge glass of bourbon.

"And how much did he pay you?" Kara asks. Both suits freeze, Number Two in the midst of his drink. "Kidding," she says with a laugh. Yeah, she's not kidding, but she'd like them to think so. "Like I said, you boys are too tense." She raises her glass. "Here's to taking the gloves off." 

They tentatively go to drink with her, but she pulls a silenced gun from under the table and shoots them both dead. John says nothing, blank and appalled. This is the world he lives in now. This is the choice he made. Cold murder is the life he will live until the day he is on the other side of that table.

Back in the present, Reese is still breathing through the torture of Kohl's needles.

At the station, Carter's on the phone. "You've gotta be kidding me." Once she hangs up, she raises her voice across the desk to Fusco. "Remember our friend the German agent and his escort to JFK?" Yeah, Fucso remembers. He sits back, barely able to hold in a knowing grin. "Apparently a guy in a suit shot them off the road with a high caliber weapon." Fusco's pretty impressed. John gets all the good toys. "I'm going to the scene. See if my guy left a trail that leads to Kohl."

Good thing she's gone, because Finch is calling Fusco from the back of that chauffeured town car. "I need your help." His voice is soft, honest. 

But Fusco's pretty frustrated. "Look. First him, now you. You guys just can't ring me up like I'm a bellhop." They kind of can, Lionel, you're being blackmailed.

"Our mutual friend went after your perpetrator and I haven't heard from him. Something's wrong." Finch always talks faster when there's emotion involved, especially anxiety or fear. "This man may be more dangerous than we anticipated." John certainly underestimated him. As Harold is talking, Anja is beside him, making her own cell call. "I need you to check on–"

"Look, I'm doing everything I can to convince Carter your boy's not a problem." That's true. It's something Lionel had to learn first hand, but now he believes it and he is willing to work to protect him. Although he still needs protection himself. "Now you want me to just walk off the job?"

"Then you need to figure something out. It's urgent." Nothing matters but making sure Reese is alive. If he dies, everything for all of them is lost. He lowers his voice, slow and serious, his boss tone. "I'm sending you an address."

He hangs up his phone, looks at it a moment, then hears Anja's caught, scared breathing beside him. He turns to her. 

"Not getting a response?" He looks at her, calm and compassionate. He always wants to ease the suffering of others he sees around him, innocents especially. "I know you don't know me, but I'm someone who can help."

Back at Anja's, the torture's not going as well as the man wielding the needles would have hoped. The gag is out of John's mouth, but he's not saying anything useful.

"You're gonna have to kill me, Kohl." 

John is not doing well, obviously, but Kohl's not either, looking disappointed at John's stubbornness across the table.

"Nobody enjoys taking life." Untrue, but true for the two of them perhaps. It's just their job and talent. "Killing is what I was good at."

"I noticed. That hydrogen cyanide you used on Wernick, you didn't bring that into the country. You bought that here and mixed it yourself." From one spy to another, John is impressed. He has half a smile, working his captor as much as his captor is working him. "Didn't you?"

"You're... familiar with poisons?" It's dawning on Kohl this is not some average man he has tied up here.

"Oh, I've had some experience." On both sides of the stuff.

"I have taken lives... positioned on the wall... with a rifle. The Stasi came calling. They said, "Your country needs you.""

"They always say that." John has some experience with that one as well. 

"Hmm." He has more in common with his captive than he thought. "For my country, I left my country. I killed wherever they sent me. For that, I was called a monster. Even the blackest heart still beats."

"I was you, Kohl." John's eyes are watery, from pain and remembrance. There is no need to finesse here. He feels everything he's saying. "Revenge won't help."

Kohl's not having it. "24 years, they kept me buried in that hellhole. I've thought about nothing but today."

"What about tomorrow?" Oh, sweet John, talking about hope, the future, change. He's chosen life. He's chosen life because of Finch.

"I have to see her. My Anja." Kohl knows he's not wrong, but Anja, she was his love, his reason for being. He makes his choice, pulls out another long needle, and starts another lecture about nerves.

Finch and Anja are talking in the car. 

"Ulrich was always gone for work," she says in a strong German accent. "But when he was with me, he loved me. And I loved him." Finch is listening, attentive and silent, letting her talk. "I was the wife of a spy. I knew he couldn't talk about what he did. Then one day he came home and said the Stasi had turned on him." 

"So then you fled to the Soviet Union." Finch follows the thought.

"He thought it was still safe there. We traveled separately, that's when the Americans found me. Then they showed me photos."

"Of all the assassinations." Finch has seen pictures like that too, from looking into Reese's past.

"I told myself that he had lied first. So much death..." She can't hold her tears anymore. "How could he?" Finch's eyes fall. There is nothing he can say to that. "The Americans staged the car accident to keep me safe. Ulrich believed I was dead. But I started a new life." 

She looks away, but Finch can tell there's more she's not saying.

Back at the torture apartment, Kohl's getting pretty frustrated at his lack of progress. He shouldn't have expected any better than if he were the one in the chair instead. He's stiff and tired. "This could take all night," he says, shaking out worn out shoulders and old joints. Torture is a young man's game.

But then as he's walking around, he sees something and freezes. He lifts a menu tacked to the bulletin board to see a picture, a girl wearing a Columbia sweatshirt and a smile. And now he knows. It wasn't only Anja's life that was hidden from him. 

John sees this and winces. Now Ulrich is infinitely more dangerous. If he was just torturing John, that kept him busy not hurting anyone else. But if he decides there's someone else he needs to see, that's deadly for them and him.

"She has my mother's eyes." Ulrich cannot look away from the picture, torn away from the wall, sitting in his hands.

"Don't do anything stupid, Ulrich." Torturing me for hours, look, I get that. But this? 

His warning doesn't help. Ulrich's immediately rifling through drawers looking for an identity, a location of this girl he now knows is his daughter. He opens up a cabinet door and finds a photo album.

"You... hid this?"

John just shrugs. That must have been a frightening thing to find. He had to hurriedly hide any evidence of the daughter's existence in the few minutes before Ulrich got there. He missed only one. His acceptance of torture was hiding two secrets, not just one.

Ulrich flips through the book, watching this girl's life in fast motion. "Her name is Marie," he says, amazed.

"You're not a monster to her yet. It's too late for you and me, but she could have a normal life." Poor John. He sees himself as hopelessly tainted with the crimes against humanity he has committed. It is a stain on him that rubs onto anyone around him he cares about.

Kohl is listening, but it's not going to work. He finds a letter with an address. "How could she keep this from me? Anja... how could she take..." And John drops his head, knowing this is lost and disastrous for all of them. "How could _they_... take this girl from me?" His voice is hardening as he speaks along with his heart.

But John keeps trying, begging. "That girl could have a chance. Just leave her be."

Ulrich hurries to gather his things in his arms. "As one professional to another, I respect what you have tried to do. But I can't have you following me." Kohl doesn't really like killing, and he very much won't enjoy killing John, a man he's come to feel a kinship with, but John is too good, too dangerous to be left alive. Ulrich raises his silenced gun, the one John was admiring earlier.

"Wouldn't worry," says a voice from the side. It's Fusco, gun out. He and Finch before him were in time. "You aren't going anywhere." John is as surprised as Kohl is.

Kohl turns and immediately fires. But Fusco leans out of the doorway in time. Ulrich runs. He has more important places to be than a gunfight. Fusco starts to follow, but John tells him to untie him.

"Where do you think he's going?" Fusco asks.

John stands. He is sweaty, tired, but always driven. The gag still hangs around his neck. "To find his daughter."

The machine has her ten thousand eyes on the daughter, who is leaving a study group on campus. For the first time all night, she looks at her phone. _11 Missed Calls_ , it says. That can't be good. She's walking and fiddling with the phone when Ulrich walks up in front of her. It's already too late. She'll never have that chance at a normal life now.

"Excuse me, Miss. Can you help me? I'm looking for Lerner Hall." He has a campus map in her hands.

She brightens and smiles, wanting to be helpful to a stranger. "Oh, yeah, sure, um..." and as she's looking around trying to figure out how best to describe these directions, he pulls the map back to reveal his gun. He's doing this in the most dramatic and terrifying way possible. If he was ever going to try to connect with her, that chance is gone now. She will be traumatized for life.

She looks up at him, scared and stunned.

"You need to call your mother," he says.

Anja picks up elsewhere. The machine is keeping its eyes on Marie as he walks her away in the park. 

"Mom, there's a man here with me. He wants to talk to you."

Finch is filling Reese in on what he knows from his end of Anja and Marie's call. "Kohl wants to meet in the park, says he wouldn't hurt the girl if his wife came alone."

"She's not going anywhere alone."

In the park at the worst father daughter meeting in history, Marie is begging Ulrich not to hurt her. 

"I just need to speak to your mother, and then this will all be over." And she will have to watch the whole thing. What does Kohl think he's gaining here?Just vengeance by cruelty?

"How do you know her?" Marie asks as she's led down the walkway by the arm.

"In the past, I knew her. I knew your father." 

"My father?" 

"Did your mother tell you about him?" What was the story she gave all this girl's life?

She nods. "He was a soldier in Germany... before she moved here. He was a brave man. He died before I was born. He died a hero."

Kohl is a bit taken aback. "A hero?"

"After the Berlin Wall fell, he helped her get out. He helped her get free so she and I could start a new life together. Did you know my father?" 

And here's another moment this could have been fixed by Ulrich making the smart decision. Anja told the truth in her way. He did ultimately help them find peace and safety. It came at the expense of his own, but it came. He could leave her with that belief and there would still be sanity in her life. She wouldn't have to be scarred forever. But Kohl is too bent, too far gone. He can't just stop, no matter how much better for everyone it would be. 

"I did. Once." He hasn't said the thing but he's not letting her go, so the disaster continues. He leads her on into the darkness.

The police band is already chirping about possible abduction in the park. 

Kohl leads Marie to an open area. "I'm really sorry about this. More sorry than you'll ever know." 

Anja is walking up with Finch limping and watching her just behind. As Reese said, she's not going anywhere alone. This is incredibly brave for Finch. He can't fight, can't stop any violence here directly, but he can hope his presence will discourage it, and he can try to intervene with his wits if he has to. He can also simply get killed at any moment. But that is the chance he and John take. That is their endeavor in sum.

Ulrich knows if this man is with Anja, then his former captive must be working with him. "Where is your friend?"

"He's right here," says John, appearing from nowhere with a gun as he does. He doesn't raise the gun, it would only escalate things and terrify and endanger Marie and Anja more. But he makes its presence well known.

Carter is rolling up nearby with a squad of guys in helmets to meet Fusco.

"Where you been? We got an anonymous call."

"Our shooter's in the park?"

She readies her gun. "And if he's here, I got a feeling my vigilante's here too." She's right as ever.

"Think we'll get them both?" 

"Why don't the two of you go with him?" she says to a few of the men with her. She's on a mission.

Finally, after all these years, Kohl stands in front of Anja. She is so scared and all he can ask is why. "Why? Why did you go?"

"I found out my husband wasn't the man I married. He was a killer." And... Marie is starting to get it. This is the moment she will have burned in her mind for the rest of her life, this realization. Finch watches too, unable to do more than bear witness, his afterlife curse. 

"I was trapped and pregnant." John is getting nervous. Every detail she adds increases the risk of something mad and dangerous from Ulrich. "I thought I knew him, but they told me he had become a monster."

"Mom," Marie says, "who is this man?" You know who he is.

Anja turns back to Ulrich. "I was afraid of the person you had become. Can you forgive me for the person I was?"

"I... had to see your face. To see both of your faces." Marie is horrified. This lunatic holding them at gunpoint is her father. Everything she has ever known about herself is a lie.

"You told her about her father," he continues. "That he was a hero. That he saved you."

She tells him the truth. "Without him, we wouldn't have had this life. Either of us."

"A part of me has been with you. Always." 

The women's breaths catch. Ulrich lifts his gun. From the side, John tries once more to talk this into something other than more death. He brings up his own pistol and shakes his head. _No. Don't do this. You know this is wrong._

But Kohl is just too far gone. He moves his gun to shoot, but John gets him first.

The gunshot can be heard echoing everywhere. Carter immediately stops with her guys and gets on the radio. "Who has a twenty on that shot?"

Ulrich is collapses onto a bench by his wife and daughter. Marie is totally horrified, her mother distraught, calling his name. Despite everything, you never stop loving someone completely. A part of you will always feel that connection.

Everyone closes in. Reese picks up Ulrich's gun from the ground, walks toward his boss. "Finch, get them out of here." This is what Finch can do, how he can help, and it is vitally important. He gently reaches for Marie's arm. 

But Anja is hearing Ulrich's final words.

"You were right... to fear me. You were right." This is the best he can do to let them go. It's all too late. Finch pulls the ladies away to safety. Kohl watches them go, holding the hole in his chest.

John clicks open the magazine in the gun. "Empty." This was Ulrich's plan the whole time. He wasn't going to hurt them, just wanted to see them and then commit suicide by spy. Reese sits down on the bench next to Kohl, who looks down at the blood now all over his hand. He struggles for breath.

"I wouldn't have hurt her." But he let her believe he would have. He made her believe he would have intentionally so she could know she was right. "I never had a tomorrow."

John looks over at him, pale, sad. "How did you know I'd shoot?"

"You are a soldier, like me." If they're alike, what does that mean for John's tomorrows? "They took everything I had. But part of me survived. It was... her." And that's the last of his breath. He drops limp beside John, who looks on, nothing left to do.

By the time Carter and Fusco come up on Kohl on the bench, he's dead and John's nowhere to be seen.

"Who do you think it was, Carter?" Fusco says as if there's any question at all.

John watches from the shadows and thinks back to that stone room with Kara once more. The men lay dead on the ground in front of them. The table is covered with spilled ice and empty glasses.

Kara puts the gun down and looks over at John.

"Harper." She's still looking for an identity for him, and completely unmoved by the death before her she has dealt. Kara feels nothing. John feels everything. He looks over at her, pale, trying to hide his horror. This woman is a monster and so now he will be at her making. 

"No, not a Harper." She casually puts the gun by him. "I need you to dispose of this. And them." She needs to make sure he understands that he is complicit, just as guilty of these murders as she is. 

"You didn't even question them." John can't help but say it. It's too much to hold inside, especially then, before he was broken. His eyes don't leave the bodies still bleeding on the floor.

"We don't have time for questions. Only answers." Only orders. She is more a machine than the Machine is. "These men took a bribe to let a mass murderer escape."

John stands, still shaken, unable to hold his voice completely straight. "How do we know it was them?"

"Anonymous source. Very reliable." She's never wrong. But she's not the one giving the orders. "You need to know this is right? I'll tell you one last time before it gets complicated. This is right. The threat is real. Your country needs you."

Their eyes are locked together. This is the moment John will become the man he is today, the choice he makes in this instant to accept Kara's brutal way of seeing the world, to accept her and the choices she makes.

"No teeth, no fingertips," she says as she walks away from him. She turns at the door. "One last thing. You don't have any old friends. You see them, you don't know them. We're walking in the dark here, you understand?" Walking dead, she means. She is deliberately killing the person John was, severing his life from him to carve him into a weapon. As a sociopath, she's comfortable being nothing more than a weapon. But John is not a sociopath.

She smiles at him, tilting her head. "I think I've got it. You'll be..."

"Mr. Reese." Her voice folds into Finch's, gentle and relieved as he walks up to Reese in a graveyard. John stares ahead, holding his pain. His eyes fall a bit as a man who genuinely cares about him steps up next to him, hands in his pockets. It must have been days since the shooting if Ulrich has already been buried. Days since John saw so much of himself in a man who tortured him then lured him into killing him.

"After all that," Harold says, "he goes into the ground under a name that isn't even his." The pile of dirt in front of them has the smallest little plastic plaque more like a bouquet marker than a grave marker. It's his alias, Wallace Negel. "The German government will sweep the whole thing under the rug."

"And Ulrich Kohl never existed." John looks up into the distance, almost wistful. "I always thought I'd die in a place that didn't know my name."

"Do you think anyone will care for our names?" They don't look at each other. A conversation this close to the heart requires distance for men like these, not connection. It would be too much feeling. If you open those doors, anything can come out. 

"After we're dead."

"I thought we already were." 

Finally Finch looks up at him, arching an eyebrow, skeptical. This is their existence, a space past life into something else. They turn and walk away together in silence. John and Harold are alive, if only to each other.


	10. POI 1x09 - Get Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Carter's number comes up and John has to find ways to protect her without her taking him down in the process.

### POI 1x09 - Get Carter

#### Landmarks

  * Carter on duty shooting 2
  * John saves Carter's life for the first time and talks to her in person, albeit in the shadows
  * John sends word up to Elias through HR that Carter is under his protection and they can't touch her



#### Injuries

  * **Carter**
    * Shot in the chest at close range while wearing a vest



* * *

It's 2004, Afghanistan somewhere. "Forward operating base" according to the text. A man is led in under a black hood for interrogation at a table. Across from him is another man, an American soldier. Soldier thinks the man delivers explosives for Al Qaeda but he says he delivers fruit and vegetables.

"Talk to me, or you're going to have to talk to my boss. And believe me when I tell you, you don't want to talk to my boss."

The man says nothing, so the American goes to fetch this mysterious boss. The captive steels himself for what is coming. 

The boss comes in, puts down a folder. "Hello, Yusuf." It's Carter. This is her story, her origin.

Back in the present, we and the Machine hear Elias' voice. "She's getting too close. Enough already. She goes, today. But it's got to be clean."

At the station, Carter is dealing with an abused woman there to bail out her husband for the umpteenth time. She's sitting on a bench, beaten to hell. The bruises on her face will last for weeks. Carter walks up, her hands in front of her.

"I work homicide, Mrs. Kovach, okay? I'm the one who has to investigate it when your husband finally beats you to death." The woman looks up, knows what Carter is trying to do, but abuse is never that simple. She drops her head, unable or too afraid to do anything else.

Carter sits next to her, leans in. "Look, every time you tell us it was an accident, you're strengthening the story he's going to use to get out of it – that you were clumsy, accident-prone." The woman knows she's right, she's so sad and tired. But. _But._ "Do you hear me?"

"The stairs," she finally says, her voice strained. Maybe he strangled her a bit too. "I fell down the stairs."

It kills Carter to see and know the future and not be able to do anything about it. This woman will die and she can't stop it. It's an agony others know very well, others who will come to be her allies. She reaches into her pocket. "If he puts his hands on you again," she stuffs her card into the woman's hands. "Call me."

The woman nods, but here's her trash husband being led out. "Sorry, I have to go."

Fusco walks up, in time to watch the woman pass to meet her future murderer.

"I don't know why you bother, Carter," he says. "You can't save 'em all." You can bloody well try, Lionel. You can try. Someday you will realize that too.

"That's a homicide waiting to happen," she replies. She shrugs. "Figured I'd try to stop one for a change."

But anyway, Fusco has DNA on the guy Carter winged a few weeks ago, the guy of Elias' who killed Detective Dan Hedaya. Half the DNA matched Marlene Elias. The other half was Don Moretti. Well, we know who it was, then. Which means that's twice now for sure that Elias has been shot in a small amount of time and survived. Some luck.

Carter goes to see Don Moretti in prison and shows him a picture of a sullen boy. "Carl Elias. The bastard son you left to rot in the system after you murdered his mother almost 40 years ago. Your mistress." He denies everything, but she mentions the DNA match and produces another picture. "And guess what? Your son's all grown up now."

She has more pictures, these of the men Elias has killed so far. Moretti is unimpressed. "You killed his mother and left him to the wolves. What do you think he's going to do to you?" She offers protective custody. She tells him the truth. "It's not a question of if, but when."

He mentions another truth. Elias has already killed one cop and taken a shot at her once already. He's not the only one who needs to be watching their back.

"There a task force going after this Elias or is it just you, Detective?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Way it looks from my side of the fence, you're all alone." She scoffs as she leaves, but he's not wrong. Those who would be her allies are still her prey.

Later, there's a homicide. Fusco and Carter are getting up to speed. It was a drive by. "Any witnesses see the car?" she asks.

"In this neighborhood? You're kidding, right?"

She sighs when she sees the body. She knows this kid. Or knew him. He witnessed a shooting six months ago by a local thug Hector Alvarez. He was a snitch, although he got cold feet and recanted. The D.A. dropped the case.

"Looks like Hector found him." 

"He won't get away with it again." When Carter sets her mind to something, she is relentless. She notices the kid had been drinking Mexican soda. There's a bodega nearby that sells it.

"I know somebody saw something."

"Getting them to talk is another matter."

"I'm sure you'll charm something out of them, Fusco."

He walks toward her, hands in his pockets. "You know, Carter, we've been working together for a while now. My friends call me Lionel. You got a first name?"

"Sure. _Detective_." Yeah, nice try, Lionel. 

He gives up for now, goes to talk to the crowd at the tape, see if anyone has anything for him. He holds up his cards, yells about calling him, but everyone walks away until only one person is left. It's John. Fusco's announcement trails off when he sees him. 

"I already have your card, Lionel." _My friends call me Lionel_ , he said earlier. He doesn't think of John as his friend yet, but he will.

Lionel looks around a bit, nervous. He talks low. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Just checking in." John nods toward the body. "What happened here?"

It's starting to rain. "Lead poisoning. It's going around the neighborhood."

Carter is walking up to a poor nervous bodega manager, bringing in his fruit at the end of the day. "Castillo," he says when she asks his name. "I'm– I'm closed for the night."

"You see what happened out here tonight, Mr. Castillo?"

He's cagey, obviously covering. Carter tries to appeal to him about the kid who bought a soda at his store, and "walked out and got shot like a dog in the street."

Finally, he bends, nods toward some shady guys in a group over in the shadows. "Please. Not here." He agrees to come down tomorrow to the precinct. By the sound of his voice, he might have a heart attack first.

John is watching them haul the body away from behind a telephone pole. He's wet from the rain he didn't bother to get out of. 

"Mr. Reese?" says Finch in his ear. "Where have you been? We've got another number." Finch is in the library, so ornate and antiquated like himself. He is a man of the past who built the future.

"If you're going to tell me Ronnie Middleton, you're a little late, Finch. Kid's already gone."

"What?" Every death hurts Harold, even a person he knew nothing about until this moment. "Where are you?"

"At the scene of a homicide, wondering how the machine can see one and miss another." Yes, that's a very good question.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Reese. The Machine detects acts of premeditation." Finch is fiddling with some electronic thing with a screen. A printer, the little one he uses for photos of the numbers. "And I'm afraid we've got a big problem with the one it's seeing right now," he says as he pulls the latest one out. 

"Whose number came up?"

"Mutual friend of ours," he says, gazing at the picture. "Detective Carter." We finally see it. She's smiling in her dress uniform, clearly a job related photo. John's jaw drops open. He turns back to see her, standing over the men readying the body bag for the gurney. This will be dangerous in more ways than one.

We're in a diner. Carter isn't happy with whoever is on the other side of the booth. "Want to tell me where you were last night?"

It's a boy, clearly her son. He's not overly pleased either. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

"Working a new case," she says. Little does she know she is the case. "And _I_ don't have a curfew." He's poking at his eggs. "You weren't home when I called, and you didn't answer your cell, Taylor."

"I was only a half an hour late." That's what teenagers always say.

"Yeah. You're staying with Grandma till I'm off this case."

Some high school girls walk by and greet him with smiles and giggles. He smiles back. It's cute, and Carter thinks so too. 

"So I saw you got that, uh, homecoming dance coming up Friday. You gonna go?" He shrugs, noncommittal. "Yeah... it must be tough being a freshman. All the girls going out with the older guys." She sips her coffee waiting for him to take the bait. He does, of course.

"I already asked somebody." He's happy and a little shy about it. It's adorable.

"Really? Well, I want to meet her!"

"I'm gonna be late for school..." He readies his backpack.

"Uh uh, I'm taking you, you have time," she says, shooing him back down into his seat. Carter's phone beeps and gives her a message about reconnecting. "I thought I charged this thing." Oh, don't worry, you did. 

And just behind her in the next booth is John in a leather jacket, just finished from bluejacking her phone. He looks forward into the middle distance, monitoring with his ears and his peripheral vision. When they're gone, he hits his com.

"Did you know she had a son?"

"Didn't know you cared." Of course John cares. He likes Carter, she's powerfully driven for justice and decency. There's nothing he values higher, unless it's goodness to children.

"No dad in the picture for some time."

We see where Finch is speaking from. He's behind glass, lined with brown wires, a car's rear window. "You been looking into the detective, Mr. Reese?" He hops out of the back seat.

"It pays to know the person coming after you, Finch. They're leaving now, you'd better hurry up."

By now, Finch is on his back on the front seat, putting something beneath the steering column. "Almost got it."

"Forget it, get out of there now." Finch getting caught by Carter while wiring her car would be worst case scenario.

But Finch is done and shuts the door behind him, never looking back as he limps away. "Do we have picture?"

John straddles a black motorcycle and checks his phone. "And a GPS tracker. Nice work, Harold."

"We need eyes and ears on her 24/7," he says, hiding and watching from a phone booth nearby. "Even _inside_ the precinct."

Carter drives off, and John, all in black, rolls away to follow. She makes it to her stop. He's taking pictures of her with his camera as he still has his helmet on. "Finch, Carter's going right into Hector's shop." 

She walks into the lion's den unafraid. "How's the car business, Hector?" She wants an alibi for the night before. "Go ahead, spin that yarn. Dazzle me," she says with a small flash of jazz hands.

"Sorry, I'm a domesticated man. I was back with my old lady, watching... some show. Ask her." He shrugs toward the couch behind him where a woman files her nails.

"Of course. Always with the loyal alibi." She strolls up to the woman. "You know, Monica, he's handsome, but you can do better."

"You got some huevos coming down here all alone, lady." Hector makes the same point Moretti did. Carter's always on her own.

She's fearless, talking bluntly about the murder she knows Hector committed. She walks around his shop, looks at the cars. After she gets out her cell to take pictures and asks to "check it out", Hector's had enough.

"You're gonna need a warrant for that." The room freezes.

She turns and looks up at him. "You messed up taking that kid out, Hector."

He steps in closer to her, trying to intimidate her with his height. Good luck. "It's a shame what happened to that kid... even if he was a punk-ass snitch."

"You won't get away with it again." She stares into his eyes, fierce. "I will _find_ a way to bring you down."

"Good luck with that warrant, Detective." She walks out. There's nothing left to get here.

At the library, Finch has a magnifying glass on a stand, looking at a little statue of a fat cop eating a donut. He's working on something beneath it. We can see it's a camera when we see the screen in front of him shows Finch's face magnified backwards through the glass lens. John leans in behind him to peer over his shoulder. He's visible in the footage too, in a black t-shirt.

"Didn't know you collected dolls, Finch."

Finch doesn't look up. He's busy working, focused directly into the camera. "As you know, I collect rare books, Mr. Reese. 180 gram vinyl... and a Xerox Alto when I can find one." Antiquarian books, antiquarian music, antiquarian computers. Makes sense. 

He lifts his completed work. "This doll is for Detective Fusco."

"Fusco's into dolls?"

"He is now, if we want to keep eyes on Detective Carter."

"I'll make sure it lands on his desk." It's a clever ruse, and Finch has chosen well. It's the kind of tacky knickknack you can see Lionel finding funny.

Finch pulls his keyboard back out. "I've been looking into our new number." He brings up her service record from the NYPD database. "Carter, Detective first grade, homicide task force. Single mom, teenage son..." He peers into the screen. "Served as an army interrogator." 

That gets John's attention. He reads on from here. "Passed the bar in '04, gave it up to go back to the force."

"It's impressive, Mr. Reese."

"Impressive lady. Honest to a fault."

The line comes into Finch's brow, the one of concern. "Which means she made a lot of enemies. Both in the criminal world... and in her own department. I've narrowed the list of possible suspects to a little over _300_ or so."

John looks over at the numerous notes, mugshots, news clippings taped everywhere on their cracked glass board. 

"A day in the life of a homicide detective. Any more immediate threats?" John has his bare arms folded in front of him as he considers the screen and everything Finch has presented him with.

Finch gestures up at the dozens of faces and gets up for a better view. "Hector Alvarez... indicted for homicide on a case she worked six months ago... till the charges were dropped." He points to a shot of an angry white man. "Edward Kovach... repeat felon, spouse abuser, whose wife she's taken a keen interest in protecting." They catch eyes for that. They both take a keen interest in protecting abused women as well. "And then there's Elias. Ruthless killer, organized crime boss, who's already _taken_ a shot at her." It's an avalanche.

"Well, she's a walking target, gonna have to keep her in sight at all times." 

"You have to be careful. Get too close, _you_ risk getting caught."

"That's a chance I gotta take." Risks to himself Reese is always fine with. It's others he balks at. He sits at Finch's desk. "What am I supposed to do, let her catch a bullet?"

"What will you do if she catches you?" He talks about her like she is a cat and John is a mouse. He certainly is prey.

John looks up. "Well, I'm sure you'll figure something out, Harold." Yeah, he probably would. Finch knows it too. He says nothing. They have work to do.

At the station, Fusco finds a little cardboard box addressed to him on his desk. The label says "deliver by hand". He looks around before opening it up. Inside is Finch's little policeman, of course. Fusco immediately loves it, holds it up to admire it more. "What the hell?" He smiles at it, and it records that smile for the right eyes to see.

His cell buzzes. When he answers, John's voice comes over the line. He's still at the library and he's very amused by this setup. "Happy birthday, Lionel."

"Thanks, but no thanks. It's not my birthday. I don't know what the hell you're trying to tell me here."

"Just put it on your desk and face it towards Carter."

"Why?" You're a detective, Lionel, why do you think?

"Because there's a camera inside, and we need to know everyone she's talking to." 

He lowers his head to get a better look at their gift. "You know something I don't? She in trouble?" He's learned to trust them, to know that they work hard to help people and try to stop terrible things from happening. If they're this interested in Carter, it can't be anything good.

"Well, you tell me. Ask around with some of your corrupt pals inside the force." It's weird to see Reese as the voice inside the library, leaning into monitors and talking to the air. That's not usually his job.

"Hey, what's going on? What do you need?" Aww, Fusco is really starting to care, really starting to want to try, to want to help. Also, he's starting to like Carter, she's good in every way. If she's in danger, he wants to help stop that.

John leans in as if he were right next to the man. "I need to find out who might want to take Carter out."

"Whoa, wait a minute. I can't be involved in something like that."

John half laughs, realizing Fusco stupidly thinks he's talking about the other kind of taking Carter out. "No, Lionel, just turn the camera towards her desk."

He's in the process of doing just that as she walks by. "Nice doll."

"Yeah, my uh... my son gave it to me." Fusco is such a terrible liar. He changes the subject as the little policeman bobbles at the front of his desk in its new spot. "How did it go with the old don at the big house?"

"Old man just shut me down," she says. "Seems to think every cop is dirty."

Fusco shrinks in his seat and sighs, looking away. "Yeah... maybe back in his day."

Castillo hasn't shown up, so Carter's going to go look for him. She invites Fusco along, but he says he's "got a thing" and that he'll catch up with her later.

John's following Carter around the city on his motorcycle. She pulls over and starts roughly arresting a guy on the street. She lays him out over the top of her car, cuffs his hands hard behind his back and pulls him up by his jacket towards the door. "This is a violation of my civil liberties!" he shouts.

"Finch, I don't like the looks of this." Yeah, Finch doesn't either. John takes his helmet off and moves toward them as the confrontation continues.

"Bitch, you better get your hands off me!"

"Shut up and get your head down." She shoves him in the car and gets in the driver's seat.

Once the door shuts, everything shifts. The guy she arrested nods and smiles. "Yo! Thanks for making it look good, Detective. I think I tweaked my wrist, man."

"That was a little _too_ theatrical, Bottlecap."

Finch pops up over the line. "Wait a minute, Reese? I think she knows him."

"It's all for show. Must be one of her C.I.s."

In the car, Bottlecap swears he's gotten clean since the last time she had him in. But he's still in for some scratch, he says, so she gets to it. "I need to know what you've heard about the new guy, Elias."

That quiets him down some. "I've been hearing that name up and coming a lot. I never seen him, but I– I hear he's a man not to be trifled with."

She asks about the drive by, but he doesn't have much. "I know the block, just not the players." She's got a picture of Hector's GTO. Bottlecap's got nothing himself, "but I can ask around." She hands him some cash and a smile and promises more if he comes up with info. 

On a rooftop overlooking a bridge somewhere, Lionel is meeting with one of his old cronies. "Hey, Captain." 

The man flicks his cigarette over the ledge. 

"Welcome back, Detective. Didn't think you'd grace us with your presence again once you spent some time with the perfumed folk downtown." Oh, yeah, it's all glamour down there. Fusco laughs. "How'd a half-wit like you pull that off?" Well... he had some help.

"Eh, I guess the half-wit's still got some juice, huh, Captain?" They share the laugh. "They got me working with Detective Carter and uh... I'm starting to hear some things."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Maybe she's not so well-liked by a, uh... certain element."

Captain shifts on his feet. "Listen, Lionel. Things are going back to the way they used to be."

"Used to be?"

"Thing about organized crime? It was organized." Was it, though? "Things worked. Trains ran on time." Uh, that's fascist Italy you're talking about which, I suppose, is pretty much exactly what you're talking about here. Rule by organized crime. "This new guy..." Captain shrugs. "He knows the rules. Runs a tight ship. Low profile. Not like these cutthroat Russian idiots. He knows who to grease, all the way up to city hall." He can tell Lionel isn't too thrilled about Elias being the new golden boy in the corrupt cop world. "Look, the economy's in the toilet. Detective Carter doesn't understand the rules. She's bad for business."

Fusco's eyes flick over the Captain's face, reading him. "What'd she do?"

"Sniffing around... trying to build a case. She's gunning for Elias. She's got to go." 

Lionel keeps his cards close to his chest, looks out into the distance to the bridge. "It's a tricky business, getting rid of a cop."

"Went through the proper back channels... up the chain of command." The Captain looks over at him. "Permission granted. It's just got to look... _clean_."

"Clean? You mean like in the line of duty?" The Captain doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. "I'm starting to feel caught in the middle here, Captain." He goes to walk away.

"I'd keep my distance, if I were you." Fusco doesn't look back.

At the bodega, Carter is disappointed with Castillo the owner. Nothing moves him until she mentions if Hector even thinks this guy saw something, "he's going to come after you too." She offers him and his family protection if he helps.

Outside, John is listening. He hits his com. "What's the word, Lionel?"

"Did some checking around. Carter's name came up, and not in a good way. Elias wants her gone. Today."

"Killing a cop brings a lot of heat."

"Yeah, which is why they're going to make it look clean. He could set up a patsy or pay someone off on a case she's working. All I know is that every door that Carter walks through could have a bullet behind it." Aww, Fusco actually cares. He likes people who pursue justice and help others and she does nothing else.

Back inside the bodega, Carter finally gets Castillo to talk about Alvarez being in his store. He says he's come in before to buy condoms and beer. But that's as far as he gets before he freezes back up. "What does it matter? I'm not going to give you a statement anyway. Can you please leave my store?"

She backs off. It's not a lot the guy gave her, but it's not nothing. As she walks up and John is watching from the distance, look who rolls up in a GTO and whistles.

"Oh! Sorry, Detective! I didn't realize that was you from behind. Lot of fine girls out today." Hector's in the passenger seat, sucking on one of those orange Mexican sodas. "You gotta be careful on this block," he says. "I heard some kid got popped last night. You got any kids, Detective?"

Carter's face turns to steel. Behind her, Castillo watches, terrified, framed in the bodega windows. She steps toward the car, fearless. At the end of the block, John is plenty alarmed even if she isn't. Especially if she isn't. He reaches back to his gun at his belt, brings it down to his side, ready.

"Stay off this block," she warns. "I see this car roll by one more time, I'm gonna impound it."

Hector just looks past her and makes a gun with his hand. "I'll be seeing you around, Mr. Castillo!" 

Carter looks back to see him, pale and scared. "Get out of here," she yells with a wave at Hector. He just laughs and has his driver take them away. John is still watching, scared for her now – and her son.

We next see Reese slipping into a booth in a bar. Carter's there, he tells Finch.

"I thought she was on duty," he says. He's standing in front of the board, which seems to have only gained in the number of faces plastered across it. "With this many people after her, I'd be inclined to pick up the tab."

Carter's taken a stool next to that creep husband from earlier. She slides a photo of the beaten wife toward him. "Tell me, Eddie. What kind of degenerate does that to his wife?"

Finch folds his arms, looks up, curious. "Why is a homicide detective intervening in a domestic case?" Because she cares about people, Harold. She's an _concerned third party_.

John knows, of course. "Maybe she's like us, trying to prevent something bad from happening."

Kovach, the degenerate husband, swigs down the last of his whiskey. "What happens between a man and his woman behind closed doors is none of your damn business."

"Can't stop you from boozing your life away. But you go home and put your hand on your wife again," she says, leaning in, staring straight at him, "I'm coming after you." Carter does nothing but threaten killers all day.

Husband stands to tower over her, trying to intimidate her. Good luck. "You come after me, and I will exercise my second amendment rights." Of course, he's one of those guys. His _rights_. "And I promise you," he says with a smile, "I got a pretty big gun." Oh my god, guy, are you serious? What do you think this serves for you? Pathetic.

Carter just shakes her head. "Man as angry and bitter as you are..." She stands to front right up to his face, even if she is six inches shorter. "I got a feeling it ain't that big, Eddie."

John just loves this whole exchange. He's smirking in the booth. "I gotta admit, Finch, I sure like her style." He turns to look at Husband, still stewing in his stool. "I think we got a new frontrunner." And John would love nothing more than to pound this asshole into the dust.

Back in Afghanistan, back in the past, Carter is talking to Yusuf. She's got pictures of soldiers and lays them out one by one in front of him. He is distraught. "All of them were killed by suicide vests you helped transport. They had families. People that loved them."

"I'm sorry for the soldiers, but I deliver vegetables."

"I know you're working with Al-Qaeda, Yusuf. 'Cause I have photos here of you loading vests into your truck. Now, you're going to tell me all these photos of you are fake?" She rifles through a folder he can't see. But they really are fake. Most of them are pinup girls. Yusuf believes it, given that she has one photo of him with his truck. "Show me where the other vests are hidden, Yusuf. Point to the location." She pushes over a map.

He sighs heavily and finally raises his eyes to her. "Do you know what they will do if they find out that I helped you? They will kill my wife. They will kill my son. I would rather you just kill me now."

There's no quick answer to that. She considers, and the Machine pulls us back to the present.

Carter is at her desk, flipping through photos of a boy on a cell phone and sighing. Fusco comes over, concerned. "Carter, that the DOA's phone? Ronnie Middleton?"

"His mother hasn't even come to the morgue. This kid was all alone." Her voice is rough. Her heart breaks for this boy, so much like her own son. "He deserved better." The case isn't going well. "So far I've got nothing on Hector." She's going over just some of the cam footage from around the bodega. 

"Some?"

"Yeah, mayor wants one on every corner."

"Wow, no wonder I always feel like I'm being watched." You truly have no idea, Lionel.

She's looking for the GTO in the footage, "but nothing... nada."

"Maybe he didn't drive, maybe he walked." Fusco may not always be the best at his job, but he is good at conducting others' light. That rings a bell with Carter about what the bodega owner had said. Hector came in sometimes for booze and Trojans. And she knows one other thing to go with this.

"His girlfriend lives in the Bronx too. Why would he have to go 25 blocks downtown for condoms?"

Now this is something Fusco can answer. He doesn't always know a lot, but he knows men. "'Cause Don Juan got a little chicky on the side."

Carter likes this line of thought. "If we can find this chica, we might have ourselves a new witness. I'm gonna make some phone calls."

Lionel's phone is buzzing in his breast pocket. "Look, I gotta go, all right? You can thank me later." Yeah, don't press your luck yet, Lionel.

"Hello. What, did you miss me already?" Fusco's getting pretty used to this.

Outside, John's taking off his helmet atop his bike. "You're a hard man to miss, Lionel."

"I'd say this Carter situation's got you worried." Yeah, you think? "What are you gonna do, follow her around from now on?"

"I'm not. You are. I've got some business to take care of. Don't let her get into any trouble."

"Carter's gunning for you. Hell, she's probably gonna catch you. Why are you spending so much time trying to protect her?" Because he believes in decency above all things, Fusco. Someday, you'll lean all the way into your decency too.

"She's a good cop, good person." John's squinting into the sun somewhere. From below, we hear a click of metal, his gun. "Hell, you should try it sometime, Lionel." He will, just not totally yet.

"Yeah, thanks. Look, I'm just saying, if she wasn't around, it would probably solve a lot of your problems, now wouldn't it?" We don't let people die just because it is convenient. 

"If anything happens to her, Lionel," John says as he raises some crazy long black rifle thing, "I'm coming for you next." We don't see Fusco's reaction to this, but he knows John well enough at this point to know that threat is anything but idle.

But for now, Reese is busy. He's outside Hector's auto shop, "Hector's Touch of Class". Gross. Hector and his dudes are tinkering inside on a classic car. Between them and destruction in human form lies a steel door, painted in flames. It's about to have real ones. John lowers the weapon and shoots a grenade that lodges itself in the metal. That bang gets the attention of the men inside, but the explosion that follows is booming. A ring of flames burns at the edges of what is left of the door. Smoke and dust billow into a cloud at the threshold.

The men inside know it's an ambush, but they're far too slow for Reese. He casually shoots them one by one, always incapacitating, never killing. They're all left on the ground, writhing and groaning.

"Knock, knock," he says. He strolls up to a blanket with a bunch of weapons spread across it. "What do we have here?" Hector's a busy man – fixing cars and running guns.

The best the dudes can manage is a strangled, "Who are you, man?" from the guy clutching at his shoulder and the open car door he's fallen upon.

He chooses a car, a purple 70's hotrod and hops in. "Tell Hector I'm the guy that just put him out of business." He fires up the car after he puts all the guns away beside him. "I see him again, I'll close down more than the shop." Outside, we realize this is no random hotrod, this is the GTO. Stealing it after taking the guns is the ultimate insult. He speeds away into the midafternoon and the city.

We're in the past again, and now Carter is standing, still trying with Yusuf. "If you help us, I can protect you and your family. I promise." This is a tall promise, scary to offer, scary to accept.

Yusuf shifts in his seat. "This is just a negotiation for you. You don't care about me, or my family."

"Your son, he's named after you. He's turning 8 in 14 days, right? Favorite sport, soccer." A show of force this, but Carter uses force for compassion. "But it's too dangerous to play in the field by you." Yusuf looks into the distance, heartbroken. Their lives are so violent, so tenuous. It is hell to live this way. "Your only brother, Naji, was killed nine months ago by an IED. You visit his grave every day." Yusuf can just barely keep himself together. There is so much to mourn. He hardly has tears left to shed, yet they always come. "So you see," she says, "you are _not_ just a negotiation. Not to me."

Yusuf breathes, considers. "Do you have children?"

"A son. Taylor."

"Would you trust his life to a complete stranger?" He looks up at her, begging with his eyes for her answer.

"I'd do whatever was in my power to protect him. You lost your brother, Yusuf." Poor Yusuf, beside himself with fear and grief. She sighs hard, thinking of her own memories. "I lost someone very close to me too. It changed everything." She leans down to look him in the eye. "You and me, we're not that different. No," she says with a small smile. "We want the same thing. For our children to walk down the street and not be afraid." She's got him, she knows it. He's crumbling in front of her. She points down at the map. "Show me where those explosives are."

Finally, he speaks. "The location is not on the map."

"Then you'll take us to them. For our children." Yusuf looks up at her with the first small bit of hope in his face we've seen. It's a tiny amount, but it's there, springing eternal with this woman who has shown him such empathy.

With tears sliding down his face into his short scruffy beard, he agrees. "For our children." There is hope in her face too as she stands straight.

In the present, Carter is standing straight too, getting out of a car. Fusco's with her, tailing behind, watching her and looking reluctant. They stroll up to her CI Bottlecap. She calls him BC. He gets nervous at the sight of Fusco, but she tells him to relax. "Fusco's all right."

Lionel tries to help and does not. "Easy there, Hubcap. I don't bite."

Bottlecap shifts on his feet, anxious. "All right, let's make this quick. I seen Hector's GTO outside the Lookie-Loo. Turns out he's bumping one of the dancers. You ask me, Hector got a little tired of his chica and wanted some strange."

Carter smiles, gives an impressed chuckle. "You done good." She hands over some money. It's not quite what Bottlecap was expecting.

"Uh, I thought you said, you know, real money. Reward money."

"Okay," she says, "Well, if this pans out, I will get you that reward money." It's a promise. "I'll meet you later. Even take you to dinner at your favorite spot."

Bottlecap nods, smiles. "Yeah, all right. Only 'cause it's you. You always been good to me, Carter."

She tells him to take care, and then it's back to the station to meet with the girlfriend. 

Chica girlfriend gives a sketchy alibi claiming they watched TV but she can't remember the show. Right. Carter's not buying it, tries to bait her. "I heard about that guy. He gets bored, he likes to switch it up, huh? Is that why he has that other girl on the side?"

Chica scoffs with a laugh. "No, no, no, you see, my man don't step out on me. I'll cut it off." She jingles as she gestures with all of her fancy bracelets and fake manicured nails.

"Ooh, okay. Come here, I want you to see something." Buckle up, Chica. "That's Hector's cell phone bill. Do you know whose number that is, 'cause he dialed it 33 times." She's letting Chica read the bill as she walks her toward their destination.

"I don't know, probably one of his homies. That man gossips like a little schoolgirl."

"Well, it's easy enough to find out," Carter says, licking her lips. Springing the trap is always the fun part. She hands over a phone. "Go ahead. Dial it."

In another room, Fusco is leaning on the table talking to the dancer. She's got nails too and jewelry to spare. As she texts away, she barely pays Fusco any attention when she answers about being with Hector all night. "Last night, this morning..." she looks up at Lionel to try to make him uncomfortable with a smile. "Hector's a morning person. He likes to spoon." Her phone rings and she answers.

Carter opens the door so the women can understand they're talking to each other.

"Who is this?" says the dancer through the door and the phone.

"Wait, who the hell are _you_?" Chica is pissed. It looks like they're going to go at each other, but Carter keeps them apart.

"Looks like you two got a lot to sort out." She grabs the phone back from Chica and gestures at Fusco. "Uh, make sure they don't kill each other." Lionel can't believe he's being left in the lion's den. Carter shuts the door with a grin. Behind it, we hear more yelling and a thud. Lionel's yelling too, doing his best. He's got his work cut out for him.

As she walks away, a uniform intercepts her. "Carter, looks like you're not the only one who's got a beef with Hector Alvarez. Some guy came into his body shop and shot up the place." That gets her attention. She snaps her head over to look at the mention of violence. "Bangers inside got a taste of their own medicines. Said the guy had a submachine gun... and a grenade launcher." Carter instantly knows. Another gang would have killed them. The only person who would do something like this and leave them alive to talk to the police is her guy. "You believe that?" 

She sure as hell does. "This guy wearing a suit?"

"No, motorcycle jacket, why?"

"Maybe it's at the cleaners." He may not be wearing his standard armor, but that's the Man in the Suit up and down.

"Hector's wanted for questioning. Suffice it to say, he's uh, disappeared."

Behind them, the women are still yelling, fighting behind the door with Lionel.

"Somebody knows where he is. If I find Hector, I'll give him your best." 

This last bit Finch has been observing with his audio and video hookup functioning perfectly inside the station. John walks into the library and rips Alvarez's photo off the board. 

"Hector's on the run. He's not going to be a problem for Carter anymore."

"I'm not so sure about that. Carter is now _determined_ to get justice for Ronnie." Oh, Finch, she would have been determined anyway. That's just who she is. "One way or another, she will _find_ where Hector's hiding."

John rubs his forehead. This has been a long day and it just keeps getting longer. "The guy's running guns." He exhales, exhausted but relentlessly pursuing the next steps. "Wherever he is, he's heavily armed."

"And when she goes to arrest him..."

"I'll just have to get there first." He turns to leave.

Finch can tell something's wrong. John is taking this case harder than most. "Is everything okay, Mr. Reese?"

It's not. John turns back around, steps back toward Harold. He's been thinking. "We got into this to stop bad things from happening to good people." Finch blinks, listening, concerned with and for him. "Carter's been doing that her whole life. She's not just another number, Finch." As ever, when John truly feels something, a connection with someone, it pours out of him, unable to be contained. "Some people the world can't afford to lose." He leaves, determined. Finch can only stand with his hand on his chair back and watch him go. There is nothing to say. He's right.

Carter's in with Fusco and the ladies. He's made excellent progress! She asks for a statement and there's no hesitation from the dancer. 

"Yeah, I got a statement. Hector Alvarez is a damn fool if he thinks he can play us both." Chica gestures in agreement, _hell yes_ , although she's too involved in her compact mirror to look up. "Bastard came to my place but he went out around midnight."

"Did he go to the market?"

"What he said. But he came back empty-handed and changed his shirt."

Carter likes the sound of that. "You wash this shirt of his?"

She smiles. "Oh, hell no. It's all yours, along with all his stuff." She goes back to her phone, triumphant in her vengeance. But Carter's not done.

"So where is Hector?"

Finally Chica is of use. "He has a warehouse in Queens, on 25th. He hangs out there sometimes when he's expecting a shipment."

Carter doesn't wait a second. She's barking orders as soon as she walks out the door, Fusco trailing behind. "Call ESU, get a team on standby. I'll see about getting a warrant." But then her cell phone rings. Oh, god, it's the abused wife.

"He's got a gun!" she says, breathy and terrified.

"Uh, wait a minute, calm down. I can't understand you."

"He's got a gun!"

Finch can sure as hell understand ber. This woman isn't their number, but she's in mortal danger and he's just standing there, listening to her beg for help. He hears more than that. Her husband bangs on the door. "Get out of there!" he yells drunkenly. The wife keeps begging. "Oh, god! Please! He's going to kill me! Hurry!" The banging gets louder. 

Finch rounds his desk to see his screens, filled with layers of windows. One lists as Audio Recording Suite, another Cellular Connection Viewer, yet another IP Address Log. On top of the recording suite is this one, listed by some long string of numbers, and the woman's terrified voice can be seen as well as heard as a jittering waveform. 

"Mrs. Kovach, where are you?" Carter asks as she hurriedly digs through her drawer for her service weapon. The phone is balanced in the crook of her shoulder.

"In the bathroom!"

"Stay where you are. I'm gonna come and get you." She slides the drawer shut again with her hip, no time for anything better. But there's no reply now, only a dead line. "Hello? Hello?" She snaps her fingers to get someone's attention to come help her.

Finch gets on the line with Reese. "Carter's going to the Kovachs' house. He's armed. Sounds extremely agitated." There's no reply. "Reese...? Where are you?"

The Machine (and maybe Finch) picks up the police scanner. Shots fired at the Kovachs'. Carter's at the door, but she may be too late. 

Fusco breaks down the door with her, but isn't feeling so good about it. "Shouldn't we wait for backup? I got a bad feeling about this." 

But Carter is not going to give up on this woman while there's still hope, still a chance. "Mr. Kovach... It's the police! Put down your weapon." The house is dark, lit dimly in other rooms and by the moving flashlights the detectives hold with their pistols. They search through and Carter almost has a heart attack when something comes swinging as she enters a room. It's a body. Alive. "What the hell?"

It's the husband, busted up and dangling from the ceiling by his wrists. He's not capable of much more than moaning at this point.

"Somebody gift-wrapped him for us." They tuck their guns away.

"Somebody's been doing that a lot lately." _Somebody_ loves you, Carter! While Carter goes looking for the wife, Fusco checks out the husband. He's tied to the ceiling by an orange workshop extension cord, a clever improvised choice. Husband's shiner is already looking awful. He won't see out of that eye for a week. 

Carter finds the wife in the bathroom, sitting on the tub sobbing, the wireless phone still in her hand. The bathroom door dangles by one hinge. Her husband knocked it in going after her. 

"Mrs Kovach," she asks in her softest, gentlest voice as she comes close and puts her hand on her back. "Are you okay?"

Her voice is halting between her sobs. "He... He was gonna kill me. If that man hadn't shown up..."

"That man..." Carter's none too pleased to get confirmation. This is her guy. Again. "What'd he look like?"

Wife is about to answer when the phone rings. She picks it up, but it's not for her. She hands it to Carter. Carter holds the phone like a bomb, delicately. She knows who it's going to be. She looks at the phone, looks back to the wife, then decides to answer. What else can she do?

"Guess I have you to thank for this. How do you always know when something bad's about to go down?" Trade secret, my darling. Sadly, you'll never meet her.

John's outside somewhere, hiding in the shadows behind a black van. Good camouflage with his black leather motorcycle jacket. "You're in trouble, Detective."

"I'm not the one who's hiding." He's watching her through the van's glass, keeping an eye on her as she steps outside and walks down the stairs looking for him. She knows he can't be far. "Look, you keep playing god, and sooner or later, an innocent person's gonna get hurt. I can't let that happen."

"Listen, I didn't call to talk about me. Your life's in danger."

That doesn't move her. "I'm a cop. My life's always in danger."

"You're not listening to me. I'm trying to tell you someone wants you dead."

"Who told you that? Why are you following me? What do you want?"

"I want you to start being more careful." It's cute that John's part of the conversation is extremely similar to the one he had with Fusco way back when on the trip to Oyster Bay. "For instance, if you're gonna take down Hector Alvarez, you should know the man's running guns. He has an arsenal at his fingertips."

Carter is so confused. He knows so much, seems to be everywhere, intervenes when he absolutely doesn't have to. "What– why are you helping me? And how do you keep finding out all of this information?"

"Like you said, I always seem to know." He hangs up on her and drives away. She hears the motorcycle but there's no chasing him. He's a ghost.

Back at the station, Elias is hand delivering the most enormous bouquet of funeral lilies to Carter's desk. While he's there, he rifles through his own file. There's his picture as a sullen boy. There's his mother dead on the floor. There are his fingerprints, his current photo. He looks around, but there's no one.

Fusco and Carter are bringing the abusive husband in. He's cuffed and pretty shaken up. Good. "I never saw his face. He came out of nowhere. He attacked _me_. You people can't arrest me."

"Yes we can. Your wife is pressing charges, _Eddie_." Carter is delighted to be putting this scumbag away at last and before he kills his wife, but then she sees the flowers. She's walking up as uniform from before says they have a warrant for Alvarez and a team standing by. 

"Who died?" he asks, seeing the ludicrous and incongruous white bouquet. She pulls the card.

 _Deepest regrets on the loss of Detective Carter_ , it says in probably the florist's handwriting, loops and swirls in the print. She dumps the entire bouquet in the trash or as much in the trash as she can get a bouquet this huge. The Man in the Suit was right. She looks around, now getting scared. She's all alone by her desk as seen from above.

Reese calls into HQ. "Finch, Carter's called an ESU unit to Hector's warehouse in Queens. They're getting ready to knock on the door as we speak."

Carter and Fusco look way outmatched next to a group of highly armored, highly weaponized cops in an organized squad. Their leader tells the detectives to wait outside while they go in for the suspect.

"You have eyes on Carter?" This is a large part of Finch's job, waiting. He's standing in the library, looking at his screens, listening to Reese's reports through the com. He's got his arms akimbo, hands under his coat on his lower back. It's probably aching from a watch this long.

"She's clear of the line of fire."

That's not enough of a reassurance for Finch. He's pacing about, talking. "If Hector puts up a fight, it could be dangerous. How will you be close enough to protect her?"

"Oh, I'm... pretty close." Reese has finagled a way for himself onto the ESU team. He puts on his balaclava and he's as anonymous as all the rest.

They blow the door and bust in. "NYPD! Down on the ground, now!" There's gunfire almost immediately. 

"That doesn't sound good," Fusco says from their perch by their car outside. Lionel always has the most astute analysis. 

Reese has hung back, still outside, ostensibly covering the door, really covering Carter over his shoulder. Good thing too, because she's wandering off. 

"You hear something around back?" It's the sound of an engine, but it's not clear exactly what her plan is on foot. This woman really does need some self preservation skills. Although none of them are very good at that. Only the Machine. Carter runs toward the sound and Reese immediately follows.

Around back is a huge black pickup truck. The tires squeal as it peels out toward an exit. Carter runs at it, ready to stop a speeding vehicle with herself and her pistol. It's brave, and it's incredibly stupid. Hector's in the front seat. He leans his own gun out the window, although he could also just run her the hell down. Looks like he's trying for both. He fires and misses, but when she fires, it's a direct hit through the windshield. Hector doubles over and falls to the side and the truck careens with him. It barely misses her and smashes into a wall. She doesn't miss a beat, immediately after the driver. 

Fusco's finally starting to run up, but he's missed the whole thing, of course. Carter opens the door and drags Hector out by his collar. "Get out of the car." Hector's shot enough to be pliable, but still alive enough to complain about the force of her cuffing technique.

Watching from the distance, Reese pulls his balaclava off for some air. The spectacle he just watched was madness, but it's done and she's fine.

"Everything all right, Mr. Reese?" Poor Finch, always desperate for reports, only ever able to partially hear, partially see, always imagine.

"Hector's got a new set of bracelets. Should keep him busy for a while." John walks away to rejoin the team and keep his cover working.

Carter's cuffing Hector even tighter. He groans. "That's for Ronnie. I told you I'd get you."

Later, we and the Machine hear Carter calling her son, leaving a message. "Hey, Taylor baby, I'm running a little late. I'll be there soon."

John's still following, now back in his motorcycle street clothes. "Sounds like Carter's headed home. Made it through the day. Have we eliminated the threat yet?"

Finch is working with the photos. "Kovach and Alvarez are neutralized..." He sits at his desk, looks up at the wall of photos still left, Carter at the center, anonymous mugshots all around, and Elias just beneath her. "But this is a tricky case. To be perfectly honest, I'm just... not sure."

He's right to still be worried. Now John is too.

"Finch, Carter lives uptown. So why is she headed downtown? Wait a minute. Where'd she go?" Carter was able to slip John's tail. That's good work. "I lost her. Track her phone for me." Finch immediately gets to work.

Meanwhile, Carter's in a dark alley. She's walking to a man halfway down. It's Bottlecap again, her CI.

"Where you been?" he asks. "You said you was gonna buy me dinner. Where you been? I been waiting."

"I'm sorry, BC," she says as she comes into the light. "I got to fill out a requisition for the big payout." She's focused on making this right for him, but he's ansty, looking around, waiting for something. "But look, why don't you take whatever I got?"

That's just making things harder for Bottlecap. "No, that's all right, you ain't got to do all that."

"Let's just call this a down payment, okay? I want you to have that."

He takes the money, but he hates doing it, even as he smiles in fear and nervous regret. "I'm sorry, Carter. You always been good to me. But I ain't got no choice." It starts dawning on her he's getting at something big. "You told me to find that guy Elias. Well, I found him." 

And he fires at point blank range. The bullet hits Carter in the chest and she drops backwards, gasping and paralyzed, staring up at him. 

"Sorry," he says again. "He said it's either gonna be you or me. And it ain't gonna be me." He brings the gun back up, this time aimed at her head to finish the job for good. She can do nothing but watch him and struggle to keep breathing.

But before he can pull the trigger, someone from the shadows does instead, twice in quick succession, hitting both in center mass. Bottlecap falls to the ground. The man in the shadows moves closer, but Carter is barely conscious. Her mind slips again back into the past.

She's walking up a tunnel as a group of men in helmets with rifles comes up the other way, from outside and the light.

"Look alive, Carter," says the front man, tossing her something. "About all that's left of that storage facility your friend took us to."

It's C4 in her hand. She's pleased. "You found the explosives."

"Found and detonated." She's so proud to have helped. But he keeps talking. " I, uh, couldn't have done what you did, getting information from that raghead."

Asshole racist here makes her worried. "Where's Yusuf?"

The men behind are stone faced. Front racist is fine with telling her. "Yeah, he, uh... didn't make it back. Accidents happen."

Like hell they do. Carter is crushed. "He trusted me. I gave him my word. I– I promised I'd protect him."

"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep." She would have kept it if it wasn't for you, racist trash. "Come on, you don't think this guy was _innocent_ , do you?"

Poor Carter is distraught in her grief for this man she so desperately wanted to help. "He had a family." She looks up at the racist. "Don't you care what happens to them?"

"It's not my job to care." Screw your job, you scum garbage. It's your _humanity_ to care, and if you don't, then you're broken beyond repair as a person.

It's a line a million miles too far for Carter. She attacks him, hitting and shoving at his chest. "What is wrong with you?!" She can't understand someone so callous, so devoid of empathy. "You can't just play god! You don't get to decide who lives and who dies!"

Racist pile of shit just laughs. He thinks he does get to decide, because he's a big man with a big gun and he's so damn important. "You want to stand on your high horse, go ahead. But don't expect me and my men to back you up."

And this is the moment Carter realizes she's going to be forever on her own. She believed in the inherent decency and humanity of others, and this is an agonizing wake up call. Not everyone cares about people. Not everyone cares like her. If she wants to be sure something compassionate, something right is done, she will forever be forced to do it herself.

"It's a long war. And you're all alone." He makes it explicit. Her war will never end. 

Back in the present, Carter is unzipping her jacket. There's a bullet proof vest underneath. Still hurts like hell, though. She's going to be bruised at best, broken ribs at worst. 

There's a voice from above. John, relieved. "Glad you took my advice about wearing that vest, Detective." He's only just visible above her in the shadows, the side of his face just outlined in the barest streetlight, more silhouette than man. "I know this doesn't change anything. I know you'll still arrest me if you get the chance. But you should know, whether you like me or not, Joss..." And using her given name really gets her attention, as much as she can offer with this little breath and this much pain. "You're not alone."

He leaves her then, knowing she's safe, albeit writhing and injured on the ground. She never saw his face. 

Reese makes his report in. "Elias got to Carter's CI. Turned him into his triggerman."

"Is she safe?" Finch's voice is full of fear for her, this good person who is doing exactly what they do, just on the other side of the law.

"For now. Time to end this, Finch. Once and for all." Unfortunately, he's not going to get that kind of closure with Elias. 

Of course, John's not going for Elias. He meets Fusco's Captain contact up on that rooftop he apparently haunts, and John dangles the guy backwards over the ledge. The man screams, but there's no recourse against John Reese when he decides to come for you. 

"Body falls from this height, it's messy," he says right up to the Captain's face. "Of course, I don't care about making it look clean... unlike your pal, Elias."

"I don't know who you are, but you're threatening a Captain!"

As if that would sway John in the slightest. He fears nothing and no one. He takes the man's own gun out of his holster and puts it directly over his heart.

"Okay! Okay! Okay!" the Captain says, finally getting it that John means business for real and he will not be bent with just threats.

"Elias can't kill a cop without permission. Run this up the chain of command. Permission's been revoked." The Captain stares, sweaty and red faced, up at John, barely believing this man is for real. "Tell Elias if he so much as touches Detective Carter again, I will put him... you... everyone in the ground." John's eyes are wild. There is a touch of the monster still inside him, and it comes out when he is protecting someone he's taken as his own. "You got that?" He's actually smiling. It's terrifying.

The Captain agrees and John finally sets him free. The man stands up, but the fear and adrenaline have done him in. He half collapses there by the ledge, now alone again.

It's the diner and Carter and Taylor are having breakfast before work and school again. 

"Grandma said you were late for curfew again."

Taylor can't believe it. "Oh, come on, Ma. You're serious? I was at a dance."

Carter knew that, we can see it on her face. She loves watching her boy grow up. "Is she pretty?"

He grins, sheepish, unable to look at her. He's so cute.

"Better be smart too. Smart _and_ pretty." She smiles. She was smart and pretty once herself. Still is. She reaches for the sugar for her coffee and can't help but wince. 

Taylor notices and he's worried. "You all right, Mom? Did you pull your back or something?" Or something, honey.

"It's nothing that won't heal," she says. "Sorry I missed it, T."

Outside, Finch is sprawled out in the front seat of Carter's car again, one arm under the console, another on the ceiling for balance, both legs dangling out the passenger side door. He's listening as they talk. It helps give him an estimate of time. 

"You work too hard," Taylor says. "You should quit."

Finch's hand slips in the car, and a photo falls out from a special hiding place. It's a picture of a man, an officer in front of a flag, smiling in his dress uniform. Harold gazes at it, this hidden piece of Carter she'd kept away from all eyes.

"Wouldn't know how to if I tried," Carter says. Justice and compassion are the air she breathes.

"I don't like it, you out there every day. Who's got _your_ back?"

Carter looks at him, thinking. The answer to that question is more complicated today than it was yesterday. Outside, John looks on, ever watching out for her.

"You don't have to worry about me," she tells Taylor. "I can take care of myself." She always has. Until yesterday. "Besides... we got each other." He smiles, he loves his mom so much. "Who else do we need?" 

They fist bump and share a laugh. She hears the rumble of a motorcycle outside. John pulls down his visor and disappears again into the city. He's still watching out for her, and now she knows it.


	11. POI 1x10 - Number Crunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John's past returns to haunt him and Carter in the form of his evil former handler. Everyone makes choices and all of them are incredibly dangerous.

### POI 1x10 - Number Crunch

#### Landmarks

  * Finch saves Reese's life at great risk to himself
  * Carter decides to help them, but only after turning John in first and realizing her mistake
  * Finch and Carter meet in person for real for the first time, confirming her suspicions about him
  * Mark Snow is introduced and he begins his hunt for Reese
  * Snow briefly finds Reese through Carter and tries to kill him



#### Injuries

  * **Finch**
    * Blown off his feet and backwards by a car bomb, nearly landing on his neck
    * **Reese**
      * Near-fatally shot in the side and the leg by a sniper



* * *

The Machine is listening to a man. "Any sign of the kid? I knew we shouldn't have trusted him. Damn kid's always been reckless." Reckless driver too apparently, as we watch cam footage of a car skidding and rolling down what is labeled on screen as Roosevelt Drive. It finally comes to a stop completely upside down and it rocks back and forth, smoking. The Machine triangulates the location and IDs the plate. She'll have to be in touch with her humans.

Reese comes into the library looking slick in his suit again. Finch is nowhere to be seen and so John goes around looking. In the stacks, he doesn't find Finch, but does find a book out of place, sitting loose on top of the indexed books. It's _The Ghost in the Machine_ , an old paperback copy, and by the look and style of the cover, probably from the 70s. It's been read and worn, and although the spine shows read lines, it's never been cracked. Whoever read this book loved books and knew how to treat them kindly. Finch, of course, and it looks like he must have been rereading it recently. 

John picks up the book out of curiosity, and a photo slips out from between the pages and drifts onto the floor. He picks it up, seeing the back first. "In the beginning... N.I." it reads in neat cursive handwriting. On the other side, it's Finch in his youth, still as ever in his glasses, although not his finery. He's wearing just a button down and another on top, and keeps his arms folded. Next to him is another young man, wearing a flannel shirt and a baseball cap. They're both smiling, clearly happy, clearly friends. It's Nathan, of course. Sweet lost Nathan, in happier, less complicated times. It's sweetly lost Finch, too. He does not smile like that anymore, never is that relaxed anymore. He'll never be that free and comfortable with a friend or anyone else ever again.

Today's Finch calls for John in the distance. "Whenever you're ready, Mr. Reese. I'm in here."

John comes in smiling. Finch is in his chair at his desk, exactly where he wasn't when John came looking the first time. "Where did you come from?"

"I breached the space-time continuum," he says, not looking up from his screen, his hand still on the mouse. "Not really. I did sense my privacy being invaded, but we'll leave that for now. We have work to do. Numbers have come in." Privacy is a delicate thing with Finch. He guards his fiercely as he freely breeches everyone else's.

"What do you mean, numbers?" They'd always been one at a time before. 

"What plurals usually mean. More than one. In this case, four." He stands to go to his collection of new faces taped to the glass. It's a disparate group. A lecturer at NYU, a waiter, a hairstylist, and an unemployed woman with little internet footprint. 

"These seem completely random."

"Usually when the Machine sends us number clusters like this, there is... some connection."

"So one of these four could be trying to kill the other three."

"Or they could all be victims or all killers, or as you say, all random. Either way, we need to move fast." He hands John the address of the first number that came in. It's a place to start. But before he goes, Finch has more to say.

"Speaking of privacy..." John stops in his tracks and turns around, expecting to be scolded. But Finch just looks at him, reading him cooly. "Careful what you look for, Mr. Reese, or you might find it." As cryptic as ever. Might find what? From Finch's perspective, perhaps the fact that Nathan didn't just die, he died because of Harold, because of the choices he made. Reese doesn't know any of that yet, and for both their sakes, he wants to keep it that way. John just turns and leaves without a word.

In an interrogation room at the station, Carter is on the wrong side of the table. 

"We have to be straight with you," says the sitting Internal Affairs agent. "Some things don't add up."

"Like what?"

Standing agent answers. "You go to meet your confidential informant, one Nashus Drake, aka Bottlecap. According to you, a trusted source. He shoots you in the chest. Luckily, you're wearing a vest. He's going to kill you when _he_ gets shot by an unknown shooter?" Not exactly unknown...

"Like it says in my statement." Carter is furious at these people. She does not appreciate being called a liar. 

"Your statement doesn't say where this unknown shooter came from."

"Because I don't know."

"It also doesn't say why he did it."

"Maybe because he saw me about to get shot?"

"So he cares about you."

"I doubt he gives a damn about me." Now for the first time, she's lying. She knows the Man in the Suit looks out for her. He told her that and he meant it. She just doesn't know why.

"But this is the man you've been chasing for the last three months." All of this has been just three months.

"As it says in my statement, I believe so." She's trying to stay cool, but it's getting harder.

"So what, this guy allegedly you've been trying to lock up, he saves your life?"

" _Allegedly_. That's clever."

"You know what would be clever? You pretending to chase this guy when in fact you're working _for_ him." Oh, no, that only comes later.

That's enough for Carter. "I think we're done here." She gets up, but the seated agent has one more question.

"Detective, tell me something. Has he made contact with you? Spoken to you?" 

She peers at them, judging them. She doesn't trust these people as far as she can throw them. "You got my statement. We don't talk again unless my delegate is present."

Outside, Fusco's having a better time, laughing it up with some other dudes, all jolly, telling a story. It's a tale of an idiot burglar who knocked himself out. "The genius forgot to cut eye holes in the mask!" They're all very amused. But Carter isn't and finally Fusco notices her behind him at her desk. 

"Hey, Carter." He walks over to her, confused. "What are you doing? You got shot. Take some time off, for pete's sake."

"My vest got shot. It can take some time off." He's not wrong, Carter.

"How's it going... with the inquiry and everything?"

"The way these things usually go. They make you feel like you murdered your own mother. So I'm stuck at my desk, and you're working with Olsen." She's so miserable being unable to move in her work. Confinement is cruelty to her.

"Oh, great. Detective Happy." That gets half a laugh out of her at least. "What'd you tell them about the CI?"

"The truth. He was taken out by an unknown shooter."

"The guy– you got a good look at him this time, didn't you?"

"No," she says, shaking her head, disappointed. "Not his face." Fusco could tell you what he looks like...

"Well, maybe that's a good thing," he says in a soft conspiratorial tone. "'Cause you know it would be hard, you don't know whether to thank the guy or arrest him." Lionel trusts Reese and Finch enough, believes enough in their mission now, that he's willing to start gently trying to bring her over to their side.

But Carter shrugs. "No, that'd be easy. I'd arrest him." She's a cop first always.

Well, Fusco tried. "Look, whatever happens or you need anything, I got your back, all right?" 

John's at the first number's apartment. It's bad news. The place is swarming with cops. "Something's up." 

Reese uses his white man invisibility cloak to just walk up to a car right by the tape and pop the trunk to take out a crime scene specialist's jacket and a silver tool case. "Excuse me," he says, after walking like three feet over to a guard at the tape with the jacket from the trunk not even on both of his arms yet! He actually hands the guard the case to hold while he finishes putting on his disguise right in front of him. Ridiculous. The majestic power of a confident white man in nice clothing in action. He can go anywhere, do anything, and everyone just assumes he's supposed to be there.

It must be fall, there are pumpkins outside. With his new jacket and case, John can move freely. He strolls inside the number's apartment, no problem. 

Inside, it's grim. It's their number, the lecturer, lying dead on the floor. John calls in from the middle of the crime scene.

"Finch."

"Mr. Reese?"

"You said the Machine would give us the number in time." He walks up to this one, dead from a shot to the head, eyes open and glazed. "It didn't." John is sickened. This is exactly what he was promised would not happen. Nothing hurts him more than not being in time. 

The Machine is going over the crash footage again. After the rollover, passersby eventually come up to see the car and stop to try to help. The first was this woman, now murdered on the floor. 

At the crime scene, John pretends to be examining her body, but it's mostly keeping his head down so the other crime scene people don't realize he's not supposed to be there. And then he catches a glimpse of something that might help: her cellphone, packaged already in an evidence bag. John swipes it and is about to walk out when he does a double take. Her laptop is right there and already on. Perfect. He slips in a USB drive and it quickly copies off her files. Hopefully he got what he was looking for, because he has to go. Coming up behind him is Fusco, talking about the case with his temp partner.

Lionel notices shopping bags. New electronics, new shoes. "Looks like she came into some money."

Partner checks the tag. "Expensive shoes. Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik. All bought this morning." 

While Partner is checking out the shopping bags, John takes his chance to appear in a doorway to Fusco. He gestures with his head. _Over here_. Fusco freezes, lost in confusion about why John is there. Partner chimes in. "I asked you a question, Fusco." Oops, he needs to be paying better attention.

Outside, Reese calls in. "I'm done at Claire's, Finch. I need you on the street. You gotta help me get eyes on the remaining three."

"I'm more useful here, trying to find connections between them." Finch is busy at it, hands at the keyboard, eyes on the array of monitors. 

"No point in that if they're all dead."

"Tracking people down is _your_ area of expertise," Finch says with half a scoffing laugh. 

"I can't track three people down, and I don't want to lose anyone else." He's so passionate about this. Nothing matters to him more than others' lives. "I need you out here."

Finch takes a breath, knows he's right. There's no other answer. It's just the two of them, they have to do what they can. "I'm on my way."

"I'll take Wendy, put Fusco on Paula. Can you track Matt?" 

He nods, resolved and gets up. "I can track Matt. On my way." He leaves his screen with the faces of four people. His, the only man, is highlighted.

Fusco's finally done with the crime scene and his skeptical partner and he meets up with Reese outside. "What the hell are you doing here? You didn't kill her, did you?" 

John's feelings are hurt. He talks slowly, laconically. "Lionel... after all we've been through."

"Exactly." 

"Why aren't you working with Carter?"

"She's on desk duty 'til her homicide gets cleaned up." They talk, but half the time they aren't looking at each other, just looking off in different directions. "Some unknown gunman caused her a world of grief." That unknown gunman is the reason she's still breathing. Fusco turns his head to look up at Reese. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"No." Meaning yes. He gets out a photo from his inside pocket. "Find this girl Paula. Address is on the back. Keep your eyes on her."

"Paula Vasquez? Why?" Why do you think, Lionel? You still haven't learned what the game is here?

John looks up at the window. "Don't want her ending up like the lady upstairs."

"You think she might?" _No, I just pulled a name out of a hat._

He looks over at Fusco. "I know she won't. Because you'll throw yourself in front of the bullet."

Fusco's none too pleased, but no one ever cares about that. "Funny guy. What about the homicide I'm supposed to be investigating?"

"Paula could be connected to your homicide." Or maybe not. Who the hell knows but the sentient software they work for. "Stay on her."

Carter's coming up to her desk with a brown bag sack lunch, but she pauses when she sets it down. This isn't right. She's meticulous in how she keeps things, and this isn't it. "Who messed with my desk?"

Some Captain or other boss type leans out of a doorframe to wiggle a finger at her. "Carter. In here."

She walks into the office to find a thin, balding man flipping through her files. He's wearing a suit, and he looks like a prick right off the bat. He oozes slime in just the way he sits on the corner of the table, casually interrupting everyone and everything, only interested in himself and his agenda.

The file he's looking at is what she's collected on the Man in the Suit. Police reports, vague surveillance photos. Nothing definitive, despite the fact that John walks around like he's hot stuff everywhere. You'd think one of the ten thousand eyes that the police have access to would have seen him by now. Maybe they did and that's why no one has any good shots of him.

"What else have you got on your special forces guy?" asks the Captain.

She puts her hands out. "Everything I got is in the file he's reading. Whoever he is." She turns to look at him. She's got a bad vibe off him immediately.

"You've been after this guy for months, you don't even have a description?"

Again, hands out. _This is all I have._ What you see is what you get. "He– He's tall. He wears a suit. Sometimes he rides a motorcycle. That's it." You forgot the voice like a fallen angel and the uncanny sense of timing. 

"This is serious, Carter. You letting him run, you've made him a problem for the whole department."

"I did not let him run!" When exactly was she supposed to arrest him? When she was lying barely able to breathe on the ground in an alley? "I've been trying to catch the son of a bitch."

Finally the thin balding man behind her speaks. "Did he shoot your CI?"

She scoffs, tosses her head back at Mr. Anonymous. "I'm not answering that until I know who he is."

"Answer the question or turn in your badge." Captain's not fooling around.

She turns around, finally catches eyes with this mystery man. She looks him up and down, getting a read. Nothing changes the fact she inherently does not trust him. 

"Yes, it was him." She turns back to the Captain, unhappy. She's endangered this man, who she wants to catch but who she knows is always trying to help.

"That will be all, Detective."

Reese is staking out his target. "Finch, I'm at Wendy's salon." She's inside past some plate glass windows, talking over tea with a friend or a client. "Seems fine." But then he watches a man all in black pull up loudly on a motorcycle and head inside with a large bag. "Hang on a sec."

John follows the man into the salon, fearing he's walking in with an arsenal to do what he did at the last location. But no, he's just a delivery man with an envelope and a need for a signature. He walks out, and now John is caught standing there mouth agape by the woman he's supposed to be invisibly monitoring.

"Hi!" she says. She steps toward him, face up at him, taking him in and looking at his hair. It is what she does, after all. "Can I help you?"

"I..." Come on, John, you're an international spy. You can't think of anything better on the fly than stammering? "I need to make an appointment." Well, it's better than nothing.

"Wash and cut?" He looks his hair over more intently. "Something a... little more modern?" Ha. "Bit of styling?" Finch is the one with the more modern styled hair despite being more antiquated in basically every other visible way. She reaches up to touch at his temples. "Is this, uh, gray, au naturel or au bouteille?" John is kind of amused to be touched like this by an attractive woman, but he's got work to do keeping her alive. This isn't helping. He's still uselessly in stammering mode. Get it together, John!

"It's, uh..."

"Sexy either way." Well, she's got that right. She smiles and takes his arm to pull him toward a chair. "So, uh... you single?"

"What?" She looks up at him eagerly, and he figures he'd better play along. "Single? Yes." 

She walks him past a room full of women doing hair, women getting their hair done. "Girls, he's single." Much enthusiasm from the crowd. She puts her phone on the table and John into the chair.

He tries again to get out of the trap he's put himself in. "I just need an appointment."

"I'm sorry," she says, tilting her head looking down at him. "But I'm not letting you back out on the street looking like this." He looks fine as hell already. He doesn't need a thing.

John looks up at her in the mirror, her hands pressing down on his shoulders. He's not getting out of this. She grins. Time to get started.

Meanwhile, Fusco's watching Paula, who is looking shifty and walking up to two burly men on the street with a messenger bag of unknown contents. He checks the photo again. That's her, all right. She makes an exchange with the men, cash for something wrapped in brown paper, a gun more than likely. It disappears into her bag. 

And... she's instantly made him. "Damn it!" he curses at himself. He's terrible at stealth. He takes off on foot after her, but when he turns the corner, she's vanished. So much for that. Well, he's got a little information now at least. It's not a total loss. Just close to it.

Finch is at work too, hopping out of a cab in a park. His man is getting out of a car nearby.

"Mr. Reese? I'm tracking our friend Matt Duggan." John's got his phone to his ear and a brown towel around his neck. The impromptu spa day continues. "Looks like he's having an early midlife crisis." 

Finch strolls through the park watching with his hands in his brown tweed coat pockets, describing. "He just quit his job, and now he's shopping for motorcycles." We see the man at a cycle shop, many fancy bikes inside and out, expensive Italian models. "Hold on."

He pulls up his phone and listens in with the phone cloning to Matt's conversation. "My aunt in Boston died, left me a nice chunk of change, thought I'd treat myself to a dream." I guess he's trying to explain why he's buying such a fancy machine with a bag full of cash. Not the usual transaction.

At the salon, Reese's lady walks back up to him, puts her hands on his arm, taking any excuse to touch him. "Won't be a minute, hon." That's good, because John's deep into Finch's stakeout at the moment.

"Yep," Harold says, still walking and watching. "He's buying himself a new Ducati." Not a cheap venture, that. Some inheritance. "Paying cash."

John spins a little back and forth in the salon chair, still captive. His hair is wet, freshly washed, hence the towel. "Murdered woman Claire was spending big too. Look around, Finch. Is anyone watching your guy?"

"I'm not exactly good at this." Finch's element is electronic, text and code. He's never done or wanted to do anything like this. He feels very out of place attempting to read a situation like Reese does without any training or practice whatsoever. 

He looks back and forth at the random passersby. There are so many. Nothing really sticks out one way or another. People are walking, pushing strollers, riding skateboards. It's all a blur. "No, no one I can see."

"Well, keep your eyes open." John's phone beeps. He has to take this. "Call me back." He punches the answer button. This better be good. "Lionel?"

"Yeah, that Paula girl? I lost her." Of course you did. "She gave me the slip."

"Well, good work, Detective."

"I'm sorry, okay?" Fusco gets no respect. He really is sorry, but he's just such a schmuck. "Look, another thing. I think she bought a firearm."

John leans forward in the chair. _You have got to be kidding me._ "You lost her _and_ she weaponed up?" He shakes his head. "You better stick to your..." but then he realizes he's let his target slip away too. The redhead is nowhere to be seen at the back of the salon anymore. "Day job." Click.

Reese turns to one of the other stylists. "Excuse me, I'm waiting for Wendy."

"I'm sorry. She had an emergency, had to rush off. I'm free, I can fit you in now," she offers, but John's already dialing his cell phone and bringing it to his ear, politely thanking her and shooing her away.

"Hi, um, Finch, what do you got?"

Not much has changed in the park. He's still pacing, but the motorcycle's been bought. "Our man is coming out of the showroom. Placed his order and left a deposit." 

At the salon, John grabs Wendy's phone. She left it behind in her haste for her "emergency". That's both helpful to them and extremely ominous.

"Okay, stay on him. Both girls just gave us the slip."

"Hold on... someone left a stroller." He saw the woman pushing this stroller earlier, then again just now. She'd been on her phone, but now she's nowhere to be seen. The stroller, on the other hand, sits at the driver's side front corner of Matt's parked car outside the Ducati dealership.

"What are you talking about?" John doesn't like the sound of this AT ALL. He jumps out of the chair.

"There's a baby stroller near the car, I don't know where the mom is." He scans about. "Oh, there she is." Half a block down the street, a woman in a hair scarf and sunglasses and gloves fiddles on her phone.

John's already outside. This is very bad. And just then Finch figures out what's happening, what John already suspected and dreaded.

"Oh my god, it's a bomb!"

"Get down. Get down on the ground, Finch!" Hell, he wishes he were there. This is exactly the kind of situation Finch should never be in. Physical danger is not something he's built for.

But sweet Finch is running as best he can toward the car, heedless to John's pleading. "I have to warn him!"

It's already too late. The bomb goes off with a quick flurry of beeps followed instantly by a ball of flame and a shockwave that throws Finch entirely off his feet. He topples almost completely backwards, feet over his head. This must be brutal on his neck, but at least his body falls to the side, leaving him on his back. The car Matt was in is vaporized in an enormous wall of fire. No one is getting out of that alive. People in the dealership may well be dead too.

John heard the explosion over the phone, but nothing after, just car alarms and the sound of flames. "Finch, are you okay? Harold!"

He's not exactly what anyone would call okay, but Finch is still alive. He pulls his head up off the ground and leans on his elbow. His mouth is open, his eyes wide. He can't hear anything with the ringing in his ears, but by god, he can see it. The flames flicker in the reflection of his glasses. The only sound other than a low tinnitus ring is his own breath, echoing through his body. It's half a breath and half a sob.

Before him, the car is still burning, although it's nothing but a charred husk where a car used to be. Fire pours out of the driver's side window. Their number, his responsibility, is dead. Harold could have stopped this, and he didn't. This man is lost forever. He's heartbroken, and he falls back a bit on his elbows. It's a terrible, visceral loss.

On John's end, he at least heard Finch breathing and gasping at the sight. He sets off, his face grim, to find him and help.

We're back at the footage of the crash again, this time with audio. "I saw it, I saw the crash," says Claire to another person walking up from their car. "Oh my god, he's dead." She leans down. "What's that stuff?"

A man's voice. It's Matt beside her. Both of these people are dead now. "It's, uh... I think it's cocaine."

At the library, Finch is inconsolable. 

"I should have seen it quicker. I mean, what kind of a mother leaves a stroller?" The poor thing. He waves his hand in the air, remembering, seeing it over and over in his mind. He's talking fast while sitting at his desk in front of his monitors, the only place he still feels any safety, any skill. "And she was wearing sunglasses and a scarf, obviously to hide her face." Hindsight is agony.

John's listening nearby his arms folded. He steps closer. "Finch..."

"If I could have warned him, he might still be here!" He reaches for his mouse, before him on the monitors are a video of the burning car and a picture of the now dead man. He's torturing himself with it. 

"Finch." John comes closer yet, holds a hand out, a plea to be listened to. "You couldn't have saved him." Finch would have been far more likely to be killed along with him. John leans down beside him, puts his hands on his knees to keep himself close. "You have to let it go. _We_ have to concentrate on the ones still alive." He gestures to the screen with the four faces, two still lit up. "Wendy and Paula."

Finch snaps at him, pushing him away with his self-punishment. The fast talking continues, as it always does when Finch has lost his tight control over his emotions. "Yes, I've looked for connections, _found none_. No shared employment history. No social networking. Paula's online footprint is... minuscule, which means she's the paranoid sort or she likes to fly beneath the radar, both of which I can relate to, but I–"

"Finch." John puts his hand on Harold's shoulder to end this desperate ramble. It's no good for him and it's no good for the two they're still trying to keep alive. He needs him to focus. For all their sakes. "Connections."

The weight of John's hand on his back and the calm command of his words helps Finch come back to a bit of his normal careful control. He puts his hand up, and Reese's slides away. Their rare touch ends quickly. "Right. I'm sorry."

He goes into tech mode, a good place to be. Clean, simple, straightforward. Not filled with feelings and fears and human needs and wants and lives. It's just data, just numbers, letters, code on a page. It's freedom from the messy chaos of reality.

"Smartphones are constantly searching for wi-fi signal, and they keep the last hundred or so wi-fi hot spots in their memory. I've extracted that from Matt, Wendy, and Claire's phones, and I'm using it to plot where our friends went in the last 24 hours..." _Our friends._ This is how he always describes them. They're all our friends, they're all people. Everyone is connected and everyone matters.

He brings up a map of New York. Colored lines, one for each person, wind their way around on the city streets.

"...to see if they–" and he suddenly stops. There is a place. An intersection, literally and figuratively. He points at the screen. "To see if they intersect." 

"Roosevelt Drive, 11:57 p.m.... They were all in the same place for four minutes. Why?"

Finch already has an idea and follows it down. "According to the DOT website, there was a traffic accident with a fatality. Name of the deceased _withheld_. That's our connection." He sits back. It's something. It's a way forward, something he was actually able to do. He's not a total failure today. There's still hope left for two people at least.

"For three of them, but not paranoid Paula. We don't have her phone, so we don't know where she was that night." He rises to stand. "Fusco said she bought a gun. She could be our killer."

"Then you need to get to Wendy."

"I have tried, but her apartment's empty, and she's abandoned her cell phone."

Let's interrupt this scene for a moment to notice that Finch is remarkably intact and unharmed despite being literally blown the hell away by a massive explosion just hours or likely less earlier. He doesn't have a scratch on him, his clothes are perfect (albeit changed), and he doesn't seem to be in pain or have any temporary hearing loss. Some of Reese's magical healing ability must be rubbing off on him. 

Also, wouldn't he have had to deal with the cops? Wouldn't someone find him lying on the ground and try to help him, make him go to a hospital? Did he just immediately get up and run away before anyone could find him there by the flaming car? No one saw him?

Anyway, Reese and Finch have moved on completely, so we will too. 

"Only relative I could find: Wendy's mom Susan, lives in Putnam County." He hands a picture up to John who snatches it away, and gives him a _good work_ pat on the back before he goes. Finch lets out a heavy breath. There's still so much to do, and the weight of it all is crushing.

At the station, Fusco walks up to his temp partner next to Carter, who's pondering pictures tacked to a corkboard.

"What are you doing, Carter?"

"I got bored," she says, hand to her mouth, thinking. The photos are of the exploded car and Matt... and another man. "Thought I'd lend you a hand with your case. I ran your murder victim Claire Ryan's fingerprints through AFIS. They showed up at this car crash two nights ago." That's him then, Mr. Name Withheld. He's a young man, scowling a bit in the picture they have, wearing a nice suit and tie. "Claire's prints were on the car, and this guy– Matt Duggan."

"CSU thinks they were witnesses," says Partner, "trying to help this guy in the car, but... he was killed on impact."

"I must have missed something." You miss almost everything, Lionel. You exist at this point mostly for comic relief and necessary exposition for inattentive viewers. You are their stand in. "How does this help our case?"

"Well, Claire's dead," Carter says, "and so is Matt. Killed in a car explosion yesterday." She tosses her head back and forth. "Which could be a coincidence, except Matt had just bought himself a brand new Ducati, paying cash."

New partner knows what she's getting at. "Claire had been shopping too."

"So they're both at the crash," she continues, "they both get money, they both get dead."

A little buzzing lightbulb appears over Fusco's head. "The money must have come from inside the car. Who was driving it?"

"According to CSU, Congressman Hallen's son Jamie."

"A Congressman's son gets killed, how does that get hushed up?" How doesn't it get hushed up these days?

Partner pipes in. "Well, the Congressman's on the committee investigating Wall Street banks." And what a bang up job he's doing. "And he's a friend of the police unions." I bet he is.

"I guess that buys some goodwill." The little hamsters in Fusco's brain are still spinning the wheel. "Was it an accident?"

"CSU thinks Jamie was speeding and on coke. The only thing that was found in the car was a brochure for a Haitian orphans' charity Jamie ran." 

Carter's got an idea. "I should go down to 1PP, check out what the cameras at the real time crime center saw."

Partner has other ideas. "I think you should stay at your desk, like the captain told you to." 

She looks over. The Slender Man looking creep with the balding head and the sketchy gaze is looking her way from the doorframe, still in the captain's office. He's on the phone, and he shuts the door so no one can hear him. 

In the car, Reese gets a call. It's no one he wants to talk to. "Lionel, what a pleasure."

Fusco's calling from a stall in the men's bathroom, and he fills John in about the Congressman's son. "Maybe you want to give this to your little friend with the glasses." His little friend with the glasses answers himself because he's on the line always and forever. Ha.

"I'm here, Detective Fusco." He sounds as delighted to speak to the man as Reese did.

Lionel tosses his head. Of freaking course. "Yeah, right. Hi to you too." He gets back to business and explains what he learned from Carter. "...Matt Duggan. He got killed–" 

"...In an explosion yesterday." Poor Finch. It's miserable. He tries not to dwell on it, and just moves the case forward. "Jamie Hallen crashed on Roosevelt Drive?"

Fusco scrunches his face in confusion. "Thought that was supposed to be hushed." Nothing is hushed with Finch except what he wants to be.

Reese pipes in. "Car crash must be where they got the money, Finch."

"Geez, anything you don't know?" Not really, you're almost entirely superfluous, Lionel.

But John does have a question. "Yeah... How's Carter doing?" His care for Carter, his protection of her and her decency is beautiful. Even though she would string him up if she got the chance, he still cares about her deeply.

"She's hanging in there, you know? But it's hard to do the job when you're stuck at your desk."

We push back over to the library, with Finch as ever at his desk. For some, the desk is the best place by far. Not everyone is made for street work. "We'll keep an eye on her," he says. "Make sure she's okay." He cares about Carter too, but he's much more cautious about her. He's talked to her face to face, and he knows firsthand how intent and driven she is to find the Man in the Suit. He flicks the camera in the little policeman doll on to see her, working away. The cam is labeled, "8th precinct doll cam streaming [Carter]". To the point.

Finch has one more request. "And Detective, leave your phone on when you talk to Congressman Hallen."

"You can hear me all the time?"

"Yes, and I'm hearing... rather too much of your lower intestine. Could you possibly move your phone from your belt to your jacket pocket?" Oh, geez, Harold. Fusco is as grossed out as Finch is by that revelation. He looks down at the phone, this little spy device. He's being watched by these two weirdos every second of every day.

"Hey, Fusco," yells Partner from outside, banging on the locked bathroom door. "You die in there?" His dignity did.

"Keep your panties on! I'm coming!"

Later on, we meet our Congressman, and he's a textbook old rich white man in an expensive suit. Miscellaneous aides and sycophants flutter about him like butterflies, consoling him for his loss. His assistant pipes in. "The police, sir."

Lionel and his temp partner walk up. The assistant greets them. "Detectives Olson and Fiasco." Oof.

Inside, the Congressman wants to know why they're there. Fusco puts his phone down on a table to get the best sound pickup. He stands next to it, rigid and awkward, sticking out like a sore thumb if anyone bothered to actually pay him any mind. But they don't, because, as always, no respect, no respect at all.

New partner does the questioning, asking about the son's movements. Apparently he'd been at a party at some Davis Bannerman's house. Bannerman... that name rings a bell with Finch in the library. He reaches for his keyboard.

"You're investigating Bannerman's bank, and your son socializes with him?" Welcome to the incestuous and circular world of financial regulation, officer. 

"I didn't like it either, but I couldn't control my son's social life."

"Your son have a lot of money on him that night?" Finally Lionel has a question, although he gets no answer from the Congressman. For his part, Finch is busily typing away as Fusco explains the reasoning for his question, the dead people and the money.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what to say."

Lionel doesn't mess around. He knows where money like that usually comes from. "Was he dealing drugs?"

The Congressman sighs and sits himself down on one of those fancy ornamented Victorian type couches that look barely stuffed and completely uncomfortable but very very expensive. "Look, he's dead. Can't we just... let it go at that?" Yeah, no. See, in homicide, we don't just let it go at that like you do with banking regulations.

"Two people are dead too. So, no." Hats off to Lionel here, his spine is appreciated. "Was he dealing?"

"I worried that he– he was doing something he shouldn't be doing. He was dealing with people he shouldn't have been dealing with. That's all I can say about it." 

"Well, we'll have to talk to Bannerman," Partner says.

"As long as you take what he says to you with a grain of salt. We're not friends." But Jamie was...

Fusco notices a fanned out set of brochures from that Haitian children's charity they said Jamie ran. He picks one up. He holds it up, taps it with his index finger.

"One of these was found in your son's car. Did he set up this charity?" Because that's another good place for random cash to show up from.

"Yes, he did. That's how I like to think of him, his good deeds."

Meanwhile, Finch is tracking Jamie's movements on the map. The points, Jamie's house, Bannerman's, the crash, they're all distant and disparate. "You left Bannerman's house, but you weren't going home, were you, Jamie?" He leans in, thinking, trying to see through the map, the very pixels themselves to find the truth. His eyes are ringed red, he's had a hard few days. They're going to get harder.

Reese is lurking in the woods, that Putnam County address Finch had put him on, presumably. He's got an absolutely ludicrous long rifle with an enormous scope he's using to peer in the windows. It's Wendy, and she's on the phone with someone. In John's peripheral vision, he sees movement. He pans the gun over to the next window and there's Paula. She's not supposed to be here... and she's got the gun in her hand. John gets ready to fire, putting the magazine in and chambering a round. He's got that ravenous predator look in his eyes. He's utterly terrifying like this. That honed, driven emptiness.

He has his finger on the trigger, watching her every move. Paula approaches Wendy from behind, and John's ready to drop her at the first sign she's going to use the gun... But instead, she hugs her. And Wendy hugs back. They're friends. They're close. 

Wendy hangs up the house wireless phone and Paula hands her a new burner cell to use. Paula says she didn't say anything to "Mom", but she knows about Matt's death. "There are people looking for us." 

Oh, hello, here's one of those people, just strolling in like it's nothing. Hi, John, you're very scary to everyone, you know that, right? Wendy holds her gun out at him. She's clearly never held or used a gun really at all. John doesn't flinch in the slightest. "You get back... or I will shoot you," she says. But rather than get back, he just keeps advancing until he's close enough to simply snatch the gun away from her. 

"If you're gonna buy a gun," he says, uncocking the thing loudly and dropping the bullets onto the floor, "make sure you know how to use it." 

Wendy recognizes him. "You came to the salon. What do you want?"

"You mean apart from a haircut?" Christ, John, now is not the time for witty levity. He tries to be casual, wearing half a smile, and he gestures at the two of them. "How do you two know each other?"

"We've known each other for years. We're foster sisters," Paula says. "Not that that's any of your business."

"Guess the, uh, money you took from the crashed car is none of my business either?" They are stunned. Who the hell is this guy? How does he know all of this?

Paula is more used to roughness, and she does her best to stand up to him, even as her breath and voice tremble with fear. "We're not telling you anything till we know who you are and why you're following us."

And he would have given them the standard _concerned third party_ speech, but there's a knock at the door. "Hellooooo? Anyone at home?"

Reese quietly gives them instructions. "Find out what he wants. And stand away from the door." Paula just stares at him. This is terrifying and surreal. But a beat later, she gathers herself and does just that with Reese right behind her.

She calls through the door as John cocks his gun. "Who is it?"

"Uh... my name is Dayne," says the man on the other side of the door. "Um, I'm sorry to trouble you, but my car has just broken down." Riiiight. Paula looks back at John. She's not buying it. What should she do?

"I'm sorry, but this isn't a garage," is what she finally goes with. Not bad, actually.

The voice behind the door laughs. We can just see him through the windows at the side of the door. "I know, I know, but the thing is, is my phone just died, and the kids are getting kind of scared, so if I could just... use your phone?" This is the unlikeliest story in all of creation. "I... I'll pay for the call."

Paula looks back at John again. She doesn't know what to do in a situation like this. She's out of her depth. He gives his answer.

"Let him in."

She starts to do as he asked, and as expected, his gun arm comes in first. John rushes forward and slams the door closed again on it while Paula takes off running. The guy does his best trying to block Reese's attacks, but he is a relentless beast when he is upon you. The guy gets a few knees to the John's gut in, but that's not enough to deter him. As their fight continues, the women use the opportunity to flee from this madness through the back door. 

John gets one good straight shot to the man's face in, and he drops hard to the floor, groaning. But John immediately has to hit the deck, because someone else is shooting the house from the guy's SUV outside. Glass shatters as the windows are smashed. 

While Reese is crouching, the assassin uses the chance to go running back to the safety of the SUV. John raises his gun back up to shoot, but it's too late. The SUV peels out and drives away. Gun still out, he looks back for the women, but there's only the open back door. He's lost everyone now.

At the eighth, Carter's going over the different camera angles of the crash with Fusco. "Here's how Jamie Hallen died." They both wince watching it four different ways simultaneously. It's an ugly, scary crash. It's not surprising the driver didn't survive. "I persuaded a tech at the Real Time Crime Center to copy this for me. Two cars stopped after the crash." One was Claire's, the other Matt's. "But look at this." She points back to the screen. 

"Two more women." She hums her agreement. "Crime Center identify them?"

"Nope. Camera's set for maximum field of view. Resolution's not enough for facial recognition." But she points at the screen again. " _This_ is where it gets interesting." The people on the screen bring a bag out of the car.

"Suitcase. That has to be the money." A nod. Fusco has some fire under him now. "We gotta find these girls before the killers do."

"Guy at the Crime Center said there's another detective looking for them. Detective Foster, 82nd Precinct." Nobody knows that name.

"You got anything else?"

"Yeah, this guy..." She takes the remote to fast forward, "about 30 minutes after the crash. He makes a phone call." And wouldn't you know, it's that SUV and the man at the door. Hello again.

"Wish we could hear what he was saying," ponders Fusco.

"Unfortunately, we're not the NSA." True, but Lionel knows a guy who almost is. "Vehicle must be new, 'cause look, there are no plates."

"That's convenient." No kidding. Fusco turns his head. He has an idea. "Want to get into some more trouble, Carter? Go talk to Detective Foster, and see if he knows anything."

"Be a pleasure." Finally, Carter gets to get out of this precinct and see the sun.

Reese is wandering the house the girls were in. There are pictures of them there with their mom. He finds a pile of mail. One is a hospital bill for the mom. That's something to go with. He hits his com.

"Finch, can you do a search for Susan McNally at St. George's Hospital?" Of course he can. That's nothing at all.

"I'm on it." While he types, he makes an inquiry. "Everything all right?" He always has to ask, because Reese won't tell him unless things are truly terrible.

"Killers just tried to take out Wendy and Paula." John looks over to the shattered glass, demolished flower vase.

Finch looks up, pale. "Please tell me they failed." God, if they succeeded, all of this, all of it was for nothing. 

"For now. Girls took off. They're sisters, Finch. Foster sisters. If their mom's still at St. George's, that's where I think they'll go."

"Mom is still there..." Finch is busy reading the info he's hacked from the hospital.

"So she's sick? That why the girls took the money?"

"Had a fall, broke her hip. Not sick _exactly_..." And he's found something else. A foreclosure notice sits bleak and white on his screen. "Her home is the problem. Mortgage is worth more than the house. Bank's foreclosing on her."

Reese is relieved in a way. "At least they took the money for a reason." Certainly a better reason than Manolos or a Ducati. "You know whose it is yet?" He didn't have to ask Finch to look into that. He's been busy with it for quite a while already. Finding these hidden secrets is his specialty.

"I'm digging. Keep those girls safe."

Carter's walking down the busy street in sunglasses on her cellphone, leaving a message for Fusco. "There is no Detective Foster. Somebody used a fake detective shield to get eyes on the crash footage." New York is as chaotic as ever, but Carter's getting an extra bad vibe. She looks around. We can see she's being followed by that balding Slender Man guy. "Remember how Claire was beaten up? I think the killer tracked her through her license plates, then tortured her to get the other names." She cuts the message off. She's had enough. "Call me!"

And she turns around to confront the man following her. _Enough is enough._ "What's wrong with you, following a cop? Trying to get yourself shot?" Slender Man puts his hands up a bit as a show of deference. 

"I'm just worried about you, Detective." Right.

She leans in, looking cool in her blue reflective aviators. " _Don't_. Just back off, okay? You and your preppy friend over there." Yeah, she's already scoped the tall guy in the glasses too. It's not easy to hide from Carter.

"Why don't we go somewhere quiet where we can talk?" Why don't you leave her alone before you find your teeth in the back of your skull?

But Carter gives in, because she's figured out what's going on. At a restaurant booth, she lays her cards out on the table. 

"You're CIA. I met plenty like you in the Green Zone." And she must have detested all of them too. "So... why are you worried about me?"

Slender Man is the talker in this pair. Mr. Preppy sits with his hands folded, looking stern. "Because of the man you're chasing. He's dangerous."

She snickers a bit. "He saved my life. What was that, an accident?"

"No. Just proves he still has good instincts." Instincts you and Kara instilled in him, you snake. 

"Do you even know him?"

"Yeah. I was his best friend." What complete garbage. This man has never been anyone's friend.

"Then why do you want him so bad?"

"Because he used to kill people for his country." Finally Preppy has something to say. "Now he just kills them." He opens a folder, lots of gruesome pictures of dead people, made dead by John's hands. They're probably real, although the circumstances would be substantially more complicated than anything these two are going to supply. "His victims... the ones that we know of." He lays out picture after picture of bodies on the ground. "For some he deserves a medal, for some, the chair." John didn't pull those targets out of thin air.

"Why are you telling me this?" Carter's still skeptical. She doesn't trust the CIA. They're professional liars and she knows from personal experience.

"'Cause we want you to know who he is," Slender Man says. "He's an incredibly dangerous, incredibly gifted man who's been almost destroyed by the things he was made to do." Remarkably, that's all factual and relatively kind in its way. _The things he was made to do._ But doesn't that admission undercut their whole argument? "He's always looking for someone to trust, but his paranoia makes trust impossible." Now that's fully a lie. Reese finds it hard to trust people, but for good reason, and he comes to it when he sees they deserve it. The only person who genuinely can't really do it is Finch. 

Carter shakes her head. "I don't understand."

He pushes one more picture over to her. It's a smiling woman. "Kara Stanton, his CIA handler. They were a team. Inseparable, saved each other's lives a dozen times, and then..."

"He killed her." Preppy finishes the sentence. "Then disappeared. We thought he was dead. Gave him his star on the wall at Langley... Then three months ago, you ran his prints. Brought him back from the dead."

Carter doesn't know what to make of all this. What's true, what isn't? She knows the Man in the Suit is dangerous, but she's only seen him use that danger to help others, not hurt them. Can what they're saying be true?

The man clearly in charge speaks up again. "We want to bring him back in before he kills anyone else." Too late on that one. Reese has killed people in his work for Finch, but only as a very last resort. For everything else, it's debilitating knee injuries. "Before he kills himself. We want to help him." John was going to kill himself, but someone who actually wants to help him for real found him first. In some alternate reality, these monsters found him first.

Carter knows John is troubled. She saw the look in his eyes the day she had him in the station. "So where do I come into all of this?"

"We think he trusts you. Like he trusted her." This whole thing is repulsive, but Carter doesn't know that yet. She'll come to understand, but that knowledge is going to hurt to acquire. She looks down at the picture again. Kara smiles in her sweater and sweetly parted hair. It's impossible to tell she's a total sociopath from just one shot. "We want you to keep yourself, and him, alive."

She looks at him, but makes no decision, certainly not one she'll tell him.

At the station, Temp partner is meeting with Mr. Bannerman. Fusco walks in behind him, carefully placing his phone for the best listening angle again. They ask about Jamie at the party. Bannerman says he was only there briefly.

"He was stoned. I asked him to leave. Even ordered a cab for him. He left before it arrived... sadly."

Fusco's still after his angle. "Was he dealing drugs?"

Bannerman, another overly slick rich white man, is uncomfortable. "Look, I liked the kid. But I don't want to–"

"Was he dealing drugs?"

"I don't know. But he seemed to have a lot of money suddenly." Fusco's face hardens. Yeah, he thought so. "And uh, let's put it like this. I heard he was dealing with some people he shouldn't."

Finch is listening to this behind the broken glass of their case work board. His brow furrows. Later, he's talking to Lionel.

"I heard, Detective Fusco. Bannerman's story confirmed Congressman Hallen's."

"Yeah, he said the same things." Fusco's picking up on that quinky dink too.

"So it doesn't help us."

"You're not hearing me. He said the _same thing_ as Hallen. Look, I interrogate a lot of douches, and I know when they got their lies lined up." Yay, Fusco actually being clever and competent! A rare treat.

"They coordinated their stories?"

"Despite the fact they're supposed to hate each other? I think Bannerman was working something with Hallen. Jamie was a go-between, and now they're tossing him under the bus."

Finch takes in the photo of this man they'll never meet, who lived and died in such mysterious and ominous circles.

John's at the hospital to find the girls. 

"Mr. Reese?'

"I'm at the hospital." He steps by the room, looks into the windows. "Wendy's here." She's bedside with her mother, looking teary and scared. "No sign of Paula." He steps back to keep watch. "What do you got?" The casualness of that is lovely. They're getting used to working with each other and trusting each other's skills. 

"Getting close. I know where Jamie was going that night, anyway." He's got his hand on his mouse, his magic wand that produces such incredible pieces of truth from seeming thin air. "Only as far as LaGuardia airport."

"Was he flying somewhere?"

"Yes, on a jet belonging to Davis Bannerman." Oops. There goes their carefully planned set of lies. "Flight plan to the Caymans filed with the FAA. Jamie Hallen the only passenger on the manifest."

John's listening to what Harold's found and processing it, but he's interrupted by a nurse who isn't too pleased by this random man just haunting her floor. "Excuse me, can I help you? Are you looking for someone?"

"Just found him," John says. "Thanks." Well, you found where he was going, anyway. She smiles and walks away. He gets back on the com with Finch.

"Why was he going to the Caymans?" Why does any rich asshole go to the Caymans?

"I believe he was working for his Haitian orphans charity. A theory I'm about to put to the test." His voice is hard. He has a plan. "I'll call you."

Call finished, John knocks on the glass to get Wendy's attention. She turns and he gestures to her. She comes out, clearly still a bit afraid of him, but what else is there to do?

"Where's Paula?"

"She's gone to get something to eat. We were worried about you." He's scary, but he did go to great lengths to try to help them.

"Wasn't me they were trying to kill." Oh, sure it was, John, you just weren't their top priority.

She doesn't know what to say. "I'm sorry we lied to you before."

"You were at the crash scene." He's trying to be gentle with her. She's so frightened and flustered. "Want to tell me what happened?"

She takes a breath to steady herself. "We were out walking... The car crashed almost in front of us. We ran up, found two people there already, trying to help. The uh–" She touches her forehead, it's a terrible memory. "The driver was dead." She drops her voice low. "Coke... all over him. And a suitcase with like, a million bucks in it. Young guy, fast car, cocaine, cash. I mean, the money _had_ to be illegal..."

"So you took it." He looks at her with judgement but also very much with compassion. He's able to relate so much with just his soft blue eyes.

"We divvied it up. 250 grand each." That's a hell of a haul. And they didn't think someone would come looking for a stack of cash that large? "It would have fixed _everything_." She shakes her head. "It was wrong. We _knew_ it was wrong. We should have... called 911, and walked away."

John's heart hurts for these young women. Yes, the decision they made was bad, but they thought it was a victimless crime, and wanted the money to save their childhood home for their elderly sickly mother. "Where's the money?" he asks.

"It's under mom's bed in there." She looks back at her mother, deeply asleep. "The nurses think it's her knitting," she says with half a bitter laugh. "Half a million dollars worth of knitting."

The Machine is watching Paula at the vending machine. Someone dressed as an orderly walks up behind her. It's our pal from the door. He grabs her, jams a needle in her neck, and drops her unconscious body into a wheelchair. One down.

John's still talking to number two. "What do you want to do?"

"We _want_ to give the money back. But we don't know who these guys are. Drug dealers? Mafia?" John closes his eyes, feeling her fear through him. He has the most beautiful, expressive eyes, gorgeous when they're closed with his long dark lashes.

"And your mom? Her house?"

She shrugs and looks back at her mom. "We'll find a way... somehow." Well, as it happens, I know a very generous bajillionaire...

Her phone rings. "Oh, that's Paula." When she answers, a picture of Paula looking frozen in fear with a man's hand by her throat appears on the screen. His voice comes over the speaker. "Just sent you a picture. I want you to get the money and come down to the third floor of the parking garage." She covers her mouth, absolutely terrified. "Come alone. No muscle. _If_ you want your friend to live."

We see the footage of the crash aftermath yet again, further along this time with Mr. Door. The Machine heard what he said on that phone call even if no one else did. "Found him. He's dead, the money's gone. We got cameras... Might need some help."

It's evening, but Mr. Hallen is getting a visitor, one Thomas Paine. His assistant announces his arrival. 

Finch is dressed down as he usually has to be when he's undercover. He's got just a button down and a brown sportcoat. He's got his rounder silver glasses on that make him look more nerdy, less astute, and therefore less of a threat.

"Congressman, thank you for seeing me on such short notice." These undercover meetings with old rich monsters are always under short notice by necessity. Is Finch the only older rich man in this world who's not a sociopathic nightmare person? 

They shake hands. "Always a pleasure to meet a representative of the blogosphere." Even in 2011 here that was already out of date, but of course it is, this guy has barely ever been on the internet. The man across from him _invented_ half of it. "Have a seat." The Congressman unbuttons his jacket, gets more comfortable. "That's a rather famous name."

"Nom de plume," he says, and of course he picked a pseudonym from American history. "Sir," he starts, as deferential as narcissists like this want people to be, "your enemies are trying to bring you down. And they're using your son to do it."

"They're using Jamie? How?"

"Blackmail. You know about his... Haitian orphans' charity."

"Yes, I hope it will be his legacy." 

Finch – or Paine – leans in. "I hope it won't. They have $30 million dollars in that account, and they've never helped a _single child_." Finch would find this the most repulsive thing possible. To pretend to save children's lives and buy a gallon of coke and a Ferrari instead... "It's a classic black-arts setup. They open an off-shore account..."

"Who are _they_ , for god's sake?"

And here's where this persona's background matters. He's a conspiracy theorist. "The banks, of course. Bannerman and his ilk. They stuff it with money, they tie you to it by association, and then they expose it and ruin you. The man who's supposed to bring honesty to Wall Street is shown to be as corrupt as those he's investigating."

The Congressman looks concerned now. "Have you taken this to the police?"

"No, no, no. They're in the pocket of Wall Street. I'm offering you a chance to extricate _yourself_. As your son's executor, you could close that charity, transfer those funds to..." he picks one out of a hat, "the Red Cross. And then what would your enemies have on you? Nothing. You'd be clean... And all of their dirty money would have gone to a good cause."

This is actually extremely dangerous for Finch to be doing. He's told the guy he's the only one who knows this damaging information, and he didn't even tell Reese where he was going. If he just vanished off the face of the earth, who would know?

"That's a brilliant idea." Yes, well, it is Harold Finch.

"But you have to move fast."

He nods. "I will. Do you have a contact number?"

Finch pulls out a pen from his inside pocket instead of a card. "It's written on this. My plume de nom rather than nom de plume." Oh, how stupidly clever. And yes, it does have his address on it... along with every possible kind of surveillance inside it.

"Indeed, Mr. Paine." They stand and the Congressman shakes his hand again. "I'm deep in your debt."

The instant Finch is gone from the house, Hallen calls Bannerman. "Not only is my son dead, but his damned _accident_ is threatening to put us both in jail." Harold can see everything, hear everything on his tablet. 

Bannerman is relaxed. "My people are on top of it. The last two items are about to be dealt with, so _relax_." At least Hallen has the decency to be worried.

"I can't! Some idiot blogger found out about the Cayman charities." Charitie _s_ , you say? Oh, that idiot will be following up on that mystery plural, thank you very much.

"What? How?"

"How do I know? We've got to shut it down, move the money, but first you've got to close up the leak.

"No problem. How do we find him?" Yeah, this is that danger Harold has put himself in. He's literally just downstairs in a car across the street. At least he's dialing Fusco. But it's not at all for his safety. It's for implicating his enemies, those who would cheat and steal from children.

"I'm sending you a recording..."

He's not the only one making a call to a detective. Carter answers her phone, and it's John at the other end. You can hear the smile in his voice.

"Heard you've been taking some heat because of me." 

She looks around, there's no one, so she leans in. She's come to like this in a way, this mysterious stranger with the silken voice on the other end of the line. "Maybe..." But her professionalism wins out. "Maybe you can come in here, help me explain some things."

He laughs a little. "No thanks. But I can help you look good in another way..."

"Oh, yeah?"

"The people who killed Claire Ryan and Matt Duggan – parking garage, St. George's Hospital."

She scrambles for a pen and paper. "When's it going down?"

"I have to go."

"Wait!" It takes her a second for this. She's thought about it since the moment it happened, and she's about to miss her chance if she doesn't do it now. "Thank you... for saving my life."

"You're welcome," he says, and she really is. He would do it again a thousand times over. He hangs up and she's left with a dial tone and the handset in her hand, the closest she's ever come to touching him.

Back in the hospital, Wendy comes out of her mom's room with a big paper bag. No paper bag has ever had more expensive contents. He nods. "Ready?" They walk together down the hall to the inevitable confrontation.

At the station, Carter is staring at her phone, her hands folded in front of her, her thumb rubbing back and forth. She has to decide. She reaches once, closes her hand and it falls in front of the phone. But no, she has to do this, it's her duty, so she grabs the handset and dials. 

"Snow," is the answer. The snake that is Mark Snow has a name.

It's too late to back out now. It is done. "He just called. I know where he's going to be." She crushes her eyes shut. This is a betrayal and she knows it. It feels wrong, but this is what the job requires, right? Right?

John leads Wendy down the parking garage drive lane. He keeps her behind him, always shielding her. He's got that big rifle out. "Call the number," he says as he sets up and looks down the sight. "Tell him he doesn't see you or the money until you see Paula. 

The guy agrees when she makes the call. Paula appears from behind the SUV., along with an arm holding her at gunpoint.

"Paula's okay," John says, calmly and straight. He's good at getting frightened people to do what is necessary. "You're going to walk towards her. If I shout, you run. Okay?" For the first time, he looks away from the sight for a moment to meet her eyes. He needs her to do her part in this. She nods. "Go."

John is scoping the area around Paula, looking for options, other dangers. But he hears someone walk up from behind him. Shit shit shit shit.

"You again?" Oh god, it's the nurse from the hallway. "Have you lost your car?"

"I'm waiting for someone," he tries to say casually. It's casual enough. It does the trick.

"Okay. Night, then." She walks away, although towards the exchange? Oh, no, the nurse is the woman who bombed Matt earlier! She pulls out a gun and starts firing at John.

He yells at the poor girls. "Wendy, Paula, run!" They take off and John busts a steam pipe behind the SUV to buy Paula time to escape her captor. He screams, burnt. The woman is still there, looking for John with her gun out. 

"I thought you were nice," he says when he suddenly appears. He grabs her gun and they scuffle. She's more formidable than you'd think, but when he puts her through a car window, she drops away. But by now, Door Man, while burnt, is able to run at John and try to shoot him some more. His pursuit doesn't last long. John puts four in his chest, one for each of the people he did or tried to kill. 

The girls come up to him, in each others' arms and still holding the paper bag. 

"Are you okay?" he asks. They should be asking him, god. But he's always so sweet and gentle. Wendy nods. Paula takes the bag, holds it out to John. 

"Will you take this?"

"No. You earned it. No one's coming after you anyway, not now. But you should go quickly." They nod and do, their lives now half a million dollars better, although they may need some of that money for PTSD therapy after this.

At the library, Finch is watching the doll cam on Carter. "Thank you," she says again. "For saving my life." And Reese's voice after. "You're welcome." He respects both of them, and this connection that they've made is touching to him. But the video keeps going. It zips ahead to the next voice audio on the recording. "He just called. I know where he's going to be." And Finch's heart sinks. She set him up. All that, and she set him up. He stands, he has to do something. What what what? He limps toward the door. Reese is going to need more than just a warning call.

Snow and his preppy crony cut the camera feeds at the hospital. They don't want any evidence of what is about to happen here. It means the Machine can't see it either. She loses her feed, and has to switch to a distant cam on the roof. But even that one goes, and there's nothing. 

Reese walks out onto the roof. Is there any reason he's on the roof now? Certainly more cinematic. A black SUV rolls up. Both doors open. For the first time, Carter sees John's face, his eyes. And he sees she's turned him in. On the driver's side, of all people, it's Mark Snow. 

"Hello, John."

"Mark." Surprise in his voice. John never thought this cockroach would see the light of day in his life again.

"Glad to see you're still alive." He's smiling. He's won.

"I bet you are."

"Surprised you ended up in New York City. Thought you'd get yourself a cabin in the woods. Montana, maybe."

"What do you want, Mark?"

"Time to come home, John. Slate's been wiped clean." But John knows there is no way to ever be clean again in any way. And the company does not take back its damned.

Carter knows this is bad. Everything in her tells her this is bad. She's turning this man, who helped her, was kind to her, saved her, saved others, over to this sleazy creep and his goon tagalong. Right now that goon has his finger on the trigger of a rifle aimed right at Reese.

"You know that'll never happen." Honestly, Mark should have used something more compelling than that garbage lie, but since he's decided to kill him no matter what, it doesn't really matter.

Preppy goon takes his shot and hits John in the left flank. He drops to the ground. Preppy chambers another and drops this one into his leg. He would go for the kill shot, but Reese shoots the SUV's headlights out and disappears from the roof. 

Carter has taken cover from the fire behind the SUV and Mark has his gun out, ready to finish the job himself if need be. Snow and the goon confirm they've both lost him and Mark tells him to get down there to help find him. But he's looked away from Carter, and discovers she's disappeared too. "Damn it!"

John is slowly working his way down the stairs. He's losing a lot of blood, and he can barely hold himself up, let alone navigate down. He makes a call over his com.

"Hey, Harold?"

Harold's in the car, speeding. "John, I've been trying to call you."

"Yeah... I've been kinda busy." Surely Finch can hear this in his voice. He's slipping away.

"Where are you?"

"The parking structure." He's ghostly white, covered in sweat. He sways, barely on his feet for every step. "It's not looking good."

"Carter sold you out," Finch says. "They got to her."

"Yeah, they're clever like that." Every second that goes by, Reese looks worse. His eyes are distant, deeply lined beneath. The sheen of sweat all over him is collecting in the fabric of his open collar. "Wanted to say thank you, Harold. For giving me a second chance." Despite his weakness, you can actually hear the little smile he's able to manage in his voice as he thinks of that kindness, that generosity that he never expected to find. 

Harold puts his foot even further towards the ground. "It's not over, John. I'm close, just get to the ground floor."

"No! You stay away. Don't even risk it." John would never want someone, especially someone he cares about to endanger themselves for him, for his past, for his mistakes. He's not worth it in his mind. He can never see his own value. Only others can.

But that only makes Finch want to help him more. That selflessness is what is so unique and beautiful about this man. He frowns, his eyes welling up, so scared that he's lost him. There's a little more this car can give. He puts his foot all the way to the floor.

Carter's on her way down the stairs after John. Snow's black SUV tears down the parking driveway, passing under the wrong way sign. Carter's going the right way. She knows she's on his track, and she knows he's badly hurt. He's leaving a trail of blood behind him.

John stumbles out of the stairwell just as Finch storms over the hill to the parking bay, his tires squealing, the car bottoming out hard at the crest. The last energy John has he uses to take those few steps toward the corner of the car. Finch jumps out of the driver's side and hurries around, his arms out to catch him before he falls. He's holding him with Reese's arm around his back with his head hung low when there's another voice.

"Hold it!" 

And they do. Carter's caught up to them. She's got her gun out now, pointed right at Finch, who has never seemed more harmless and defenseless. His face is only mostly visible over John's shoulder as the man is so tall, but she recognizes him by his wide frightened eyes behind the glasses. She'd suspected him a long time ago. _The little guy._

"You?" 

John looks back at her as best he can. There's nothing either of them can do to her now. She has total control of the situation. It's fully her choice and all three of them know it. 

If she keeps him, they'll take John, and almost certainly kill him. His partner would probably go to some black site somewhere, never to be seen again. They don't deserve that. All Carter has ever seen of them is them trying to help people, to save them. It's against every one of the instincts she instilled in herself for this work, but ethically she has no other choice. She tucks her gun away.

"Get him out of here. Come on." She takes John from Finch and pulls him into her own arms to put him in the back seat. She's finally touched him, the man, the voice, and he's probably dying in her arms. John looks up at her, wordless. He couldn't say anything if he tried. There's not enough breath left in his lungs. 

She doesn't know what to say, what to feel. She just tells them what needs to happen next.

"Go." 

And Carter shuts the door. Finch speeds away into the night, and she watches the car disappear around the corner. There are tears in her eyes. Everything has changed tonight. Her job, her life, herself. She almost got a good man killed. Maybe she did. He saved her life, and she took his in return.


	12. POI 1x11 - Super

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we discover how Finch kept Reese alive after his injuries on the rooftop, roles get reversed, and Carter is finally brought into the fold.

### POI 1x11 - Super

#### Landmarks

  * How Finch saved Reese's life is revealed: a morgue, a medical examiner, and a bag full of bundles of cash
  * Finch and Carter meet face to face again to bring her into the work, but both are wary of each other
  * Takes place entirely outside the library
  * In the past, Harold meets Alicia and Denton Weeks briefly in his IT persona
  * In the past, Denton Weeks tries unsuccessfully to break into the Machine
  * Carter runs her first number and saves a life



* * *

We start as usual with the Machine's view of a crime, but this time it's John's shooting. She saw it from distantly above, but heard every word. She can do nothing. It's out of the hands she doesn't have.

Instead it's in Finch's hands, along with a gurney. He's pushing John down a morgue hallway. John's barely conscious, staring up at the ceiling tiles as they rush by. His hand lies over his bullet wound, applying only the pressure of its own weight. Blood has soaked entirely through his shirt and a white towel Finch tried to use as an impromptu bandage.

Above him, Finch pushes him as quickly as his broken body will go. He's wearing a lab coat over his clothes as the barest disguise. He's carrying something, a black bag slung over his shoulder.

When he arrives at his destination, he pushes the gurney in entirely covered, even over Reese's face. It's the only way he can properly attempt this.

A bearded man stands over by the slab, typing at his laptop. He's entirely relaxed as Finch approaches with his cargo.

"Third one tonight. Must be a full moon." He won't be this dismissive for long.

Finch pulls the sheet away and reveals John, now unable to even hold open his eyes, although he's clearly conscious enough to still be in pain.

The medical examiner stands up straight, awake now to the severity of the situation. When Finch speaks, his voice is soft.

"Your name is Farouk Madani. You were the best surgeon in Najaf, but you can't afford a license in the States because you send all your money home to family." 

It's always scary when Finch peels someone's life away in front of them like this. The entire thing is scary. John is somewhat looking at Madani, wondering if he will help, although it's hard to say if he can actually focus on anything now. His eyes are just cracked, half rolled into his head. His hair is sticky on his forehead with sweat, and there are fingerprints of blood on the white of his shirt we can see. His own? Finch's? Who knows. Maybe both.

Finch purses his lips and pulls the strap back over his head to get to the bag. He limps over to the wide silver stainless steel slab as he unzips it. When he turns it upside down, its contents are finally revealed. Dozens of wrapped bundles of raw cash. Hundreds, in untold numbers. They tumble out of the bag and land with a banging crash on the metal. It is a broad pile when they're all out, sprawled across the platform.

He walks back behind John, looking at him, not the doctor. Looking at his face, his wounds, his blood. Their future.

"Stitch him up, no questions asked..." He waves vaguely at the pile of money as he steps fully to stand by John's side. "And you can be a doctor again." He lowers his eyes, back down to the hole in John's side, fearful and subdued. He knows the weight and danger of what he is asking, but a man he cares about is dying next to him. 

The once and future doctor's eyes flick back and forth between the man standing, the man dying, and his family's future lying in a messy pile of hundreds before him. It's not a long decision. In the end, he would have done it without the money. He took an oath, and he remains dedicated to it, special paper or no. Madani pulls the green sheet away completely to reveal his patient. He has much work to do.

Harold stands grim and frightened behind him, having stepped back to give the surgeon the space he needs to work. _Stitch him up_ , he'd asked. Is stitching up enough? It would have to be. He can't lose John now, this good man, someone he has come to believe in, to care about, so pointlessly and uselessly. As the man himself had said of Carter, the woman who signed him away to his death, some people the world can't afford to lose. This has to be enough. _Please let this be enough._

Another day, somewhere else. The Machine is tracking Carter coming out of her brownstone. It's just another day's walk until she notices something and slows. There's a green bread truck parked across the street amidst the fallen leaves by the curb. She immediately suspects it's a dummy. Her suspicions are confirmed when she notices a man in a coat and a tie sternly watching her from the corner. Surveillance. Monitoring. Yep, there's another guy in a trenchcoat watching her from across the street. He couldn't scream _I'm a spy!_ more if he yelled it through a loudspeaker.

She walks up to the truck. _Let's just go to the source._ She bangs on the side with her hand, a metallic repetitive gong. "Police! Everybody out." She bangs again. "NYPD! Come out of there!"

Then Mark Snow appears from nowhere behind her, across the street, holding a coffee. "There a problem, Detective?" Yeah, you murderer, there's a problem.

Now she has to keep dealing with this creep. "Are you guys this sloppy when you tail Al-Qaeda?"

She walks up to him. He's standing right outside her doorstep. He's got his little curly earpiece in, old dumb tech. Reese has the good stuff from Finch. "Cute place," he says. "You gonna be out for a while?" You're going to be out of teeth for a while in a second, Snow.

"Right... this isn't you being sloppy at all. This is you making a point." They want her to know they're tracking her every second. 

"You're the only person we know of who's had any contact with our boy." _Our boy._ You tried to kill him with a sniper.

"If I hear from him, you'll be the first to know, but all this? Unnecessary." She waves her hand at all the manpower and resources at use here and shakes her head. Interesting that everyone just assumes Reese is alive. Given his injuries they both know he has, that's certainly not a given. 

"Is it? You know, I was really surprised he was able to slip away. Just can't figure out how he did it." Smug bastard.

"It's not my case anymore, so you have fun with that." She tries to walk away, but of course he won't stop talking.

"I don't like this any more than you do, Carter." She turns around again. She can't believe she has to keep talking to this guy. "Watching someone night and day, you never know what you'll dig up. I've seen it ruin careers, families..." 

He's getting through to her, she knows this is an incredibly dangerous situation. If John is alive, he probably will eventually be in touch with her again, one way or another. But she's not just going to let him stand there and say this shit in front of her own home.

"Threatening a police officer is against the law, Mr. Snow."

"So is lying to a Federal agent." Touché. She says nothing, and he smiles. He knows he won that point. "I'll be seeing you."

At the station, Carter takes off her coat. She's furious, uncomfortable. Everyone's eyes feel like they're on her. She sits down at her desk, rubs her chin. She wants to do some digging, the detective cries out to detect, but she can't do it safely here. They'll be tracking her, her computer. And that gives her an idea. Her eyes drift past her own login screen to Fusco's currently unoccupied desk and computer.

Trying to look casual, she sits down at Fusco's desk and pushes the chair up by the desk. She looks down at his things and whispers to herself under her breath. "Okay... where would you keep.." She opens a drawer to start looking.

And she immediately can stop looking because Fusco has written out his username and password on a post-it note just stuck on a small box in the desk drawer, alongside a bottle of white out, a few junky pens, a roll of scotch tape, and a packet of saltines. The saltines are a particularly perfect touch. You never know when you'll need a snack.

She scoffs, barely unable to believe both her luck and Fusco's basic incompetence, and she immediately gets to work logging in. We see his desk a bit. Standard pens, coffee cup, old touch tone phone, and a picture of Lee.

Carter's immediately digging into the casino robbery video again. There he is, "Witness: Burdett, Norman", holding John's arm and whispering in his ear. "This guy's his partner, and it turns out I've had his cell phone number for weeks now." She's so annoyed with herself and immediately grabs Fusco's phone. It's a dead end, the number is out of service. Of course. She goes to call someone else, when Lionel walks up with a coffee and a confused look on his face. 

"You're gonna use my computer, you gotta do my reports too."

She sticks her finger up to him. _Wait._ "Hi, Detective Carter, NYPD," she says over the line. "I need all the locations data you've got on a disconnected cell phone." Lionel peeks over to see what she's working on, and sees Finch there on the screen. She's looking into his friends. Or blackmailers. Or whatever they are to him. He hasn't completely decided. 

"So who's this guy?" he asks as if he didn't already know.

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

We slide back in time with the Machine to 2005. You can tell it's the past, because of course, Harold is running. He's jogging through the park on a cool day. He stops behind a tree, still breathing hard, because he's come to what he intended to find. He's here to listen to a meeting, one no one is supposed to know about. 

Down by the water, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Nathan is meeting Alicia Corwin. She's got a bodyguard about 20 feet away watching out for her. Everybody's in long dark coats, all mysterious. Harold stuffs an earpiece in his ear. It's Nathan's voice that comes through.

"I thought these folks were just for your boss."

"Sorry about all the... cloak-and-dagger."

Nathan's always so smooth and relaxed, a perfect front man with his attractive suit, feathered hair, hands calmly crossed in front of him. Much different than his partner nervously hiding nearby. "So what brings you up from D.C.?"

"You." 

He gasps in playful fake surprise. "I'm flattered, Alicia."

"Don't be. My people want answers." Now we see behind him and realize he's penned in by her bodyguards. "Your company has had the NSA feeds for three years."

"Not my company," he says. "Just me."

"If Congress knew about this... machine you're building... about the unfettered access we've given you..." Finch squints from the distance behind his old round glasses. He's much more innocent here, before it all. But he's worried about this, these people they've entered into this project with. None of their goals exactly align. "...to all the data we're compiling on US citizens... you wouldn't just be shut down. You would go to jail."

Nathan leans in. "I don't suppose they'd let us be cell mates." He smiles. Her threats endanger herself as much as him and she knows it.

"We need progress, Nathan, or we're pulling the plug."

And he produces a tiny piece of paper from his pocket.

"What's this?"

"It's progress." Progress in more ways than she knows.

She unfolds it. It's a Social Security number minus the dashes. "Nine digits?"

"You work in intelligence. Figure it out."

She looks at him with some contempt, but she leaves with the paper and her people. She'll see about this "progress".

Later, the Machine is watching her fathers walk down a path in the park. They both have yellow boxes – her admins know about her.

"For once, I'd like you to handle one of these meetings while I _lurk_ in the shadows."

"You couldn't lurk if you tried." Finch is so much more relaxed here, with the oldest friend he will ever have in his life, someone he was actually close and comfortable with. They both laugh a little together.

"That number we gave her... it better pan out."

"It will." Harold has no doubt in his creation. It's never wrong. 

" _How?_ " 

" _I_ don't know. But the Machine does." He looks up at Nathan, his partner in this strange crime. "Have a little faith, Nathan."

"In you, or in the machine?" Both, of course.

Back in the present of 2012, the Machine is, in her words, "Searching for asset: Reese, John". He's not at the library. It takes a while, but she tracks him down in an apartment building from his prepaid cash purchase burner cell. She should have just looked for Harold. He can't and wouldn't be far. She goes through quick and elaborate efforts to index the building, its wireless networks, its camera feeds. She puts everything through her identifiers and facial recognition. Now she's ready to keep watch on her family.

"Okay, Mr. Hayes, this is the place." Some overweight guy is leading Reese into an empty apartment. John's pushing himself in a wheelchair. "Watch your step, ah... Not your step, I mean– it's just one of those things people say, you know? No– no offense."

None taken, John's just busy casing the place. He's got one leg immobilized and held out in the chair. We can't see any bandages or casts, but perhaps any visual evidence is still hidden under his gray shirt (open as always) and black jacket.

"We got ramps all over the place, so if you need anything..."

"I'll be on my feet in a few days." Really? How long has it been? What about the other numbers in that time? Who took care of John after Madani? Harold surely did his best, but he's no doctor.

"Yeah, but if anything goes wrong, you call me. I'm the super. Name is Trask." He turns around. "I tell you that already?"

"Twice." John smiles and pushes himself forward.

"I guess I'm getting old. It seems like yesterday I was partying till dawn down in Miami. I used to own _six_ nightclubs down there." John's still casing the joint, checking windows as this guy brags some more. "You know, I had a mansion in Coral Gables, a white Bengal tiger... had to give all that up. Bad for my health. What about you? Where you from? What do you do?" You got hours, guy? "How'd you wind up in that chair?" Wow, tasteful.

John wheels himself around to face Trask, now getting fully annoyed with him. 

"I had a rough night," he decides to put it, not dishonestly. He smiles a little and Trask laughs along.

"Okay! Here are the keys. You need anything, my number's on that lease. The name is– well, you know." He grins and points and finally walks out. That took long enough. 

At last, Finch can reveal himself from behind in another room. "Everything satisfactory, Mr. Reese?"

"Nice place," he says. It's interesting how his voice changes when he talks to Finch. It's that old difference between someone's stranger voice, and someone's lower, trusted person voice. He turns to face him. "You really shouldn't have gone to this much trouble though."

Finch knows that for John, any trouble is too much if it's on his own behalf. Harold makes himself at home too, taking off his coat and carefully folding it over a kitchen chair. "No trouble. I thought you'd get tired of hotels, and... in your condition, I felt that something a bit more... low-profile was in order." Seriously, how long has it been? Tired of hotels? What all has happened to John and Finch in the meantime? 

"Where's our pal, Snow?" Even his name sounds like slime. 

"Preoccupied with Detective Carter at the moment."

"She all right?" Oh, sweet John, still attached to Carter for her goodness even after all this. She did it for the right reasons, even if it nearly meant his life.

"Not that I don't share your concern for the woman who tried to hand you over to the CIA..." Finch is still furious and scared from the thing. John trusted this woman, and she tossed him to the wolves.

"She did let us go. Just..." He's so torn for her. He knows all too well how the agency twists people into doing their bidding. "Keep an eye on her for me for a while, while I'm resting up." 

Harold will, of course. He will follow John's wishes, but it will take a lot to bring him back around to her after what she chose to do to him.

Finch lowers his eyes, then lifts them again. "About that..."

Reese smirks as he figures it out. "I'm not here to rest, am I?"

"I'm afraid the Machine waits for no man."

"So who's the next number on your list?"

He tosses an arm up. "You just met him."

"The super?"

Their number is downstairs in the garden out front now, tending the roses and greeting everyone he sees by name. He knows everyone and everything going on around his building. It's mostly cute if overeager, although he goes for a bit of light sexual harassment for a young woman when she comes by. "Lily the cook, I love how you look!"

She rolls her eyes and laughs because that's all women can do when men do this junk. Anything else makes things worse. "Thanks, Ernie. You write that one yourself?"

Above in the apartment, Finch goes over what he knows of this man so far. He's from a town in Florida, "population 394." He watches the man from the window like he is watching ants in a farm. "Small towns aren't exactly paragons of digital record-keeping, but I did verify he got a high school diploma."

"Let me guess. No nightclubs, no mansions, no pet tigers?"

"Mr. Trask seems to have a vivid imagination." Finch interrupts his own thought as he looks at Reese and what he's brought with him. Or more accurately, hasn't. "Don't you have anything to unpack?"

John pulls up his pistol. "I travel light." Harold is fairly horrified. "Any idea what the threat is?"

"Not yet. He's been super for 14 years, lives and works in the same place... so whatever's going to happen with Trask, it will probably happen here." Finch sits down to work at his laptop and Reese wheels back around to him.

"How many people in the building?"

"241."

"So 241 suspects?"

"Or... maybe just one. I took the liberty of hacking into Trask's online phone bill. He called three pawn shops last week, the kind that specialize in off-the-books sales of untraceable handguns. Trask might be planning to kill somebody."

For now, he's just tending the roses with the sharp garden shears.

The Machine has her eyes on Snow, who's still working out of the truck with that preppy guy who shot Reese the last time he saw him.

Preppy's disappointed when Snow walks in with Starbucks just for himself. 

"You didn't get me anything?"

"Coffee's for closers." He certainly didn't close the deal when he had the chance, that's for sure. "I got you a clear shot at Reese and you whiffed."

"I wasn't aiming to kill. You said you wanted to question him about what happened in Ordos." Oh, god, Ordos. That's a rabbit hole that never ends. This is only the entrance.

"If possible..." He changes the subject. "Secondary objective. What's she up to?"

They're watching Carter too, on an entirely different hidden camera focused on her desk than the one Finch installed. Few people are quite as surveilled as this woman.

"Near as we can tell? Catching up on paperwork. She's not using her computer or phones."

"Reese?" There's emotion in his voice, just a little. The only humanity left in Snow is hate.

"We've got people checking every hospital, clinic, and morgue in a 300 mile radius. If anybody stitched him up, we'll pick up the scent." Not for the amount that Finch paid for the work.

Speaking of the man who kept Reese alive, he's still trying to help him as he recovers. "I hope you don't mind," he says, back at the apartment. He sounds almost nervous. "But i-in addition to the necessary hardware, I brought a few books for you to read..." Of course you did, sweet bookish Finch. A house is not livable without books. He holds up De Toqueville's Democracy in America. The stack he's holding looks to be more in that historical, democratic vein. 

He puts the books down to reach for a gift box on the table. "And... a little housewarming gift." He holds it up proudly, a color donut pillow to sit on in a wheelchair. It is something that helped him immensely when he needed it, and now he very much wants for John to have that same comfort. 

John's not fully getting that though, still stuck on the initial idea that Finch has brought him something specifically for his ass. "Thanks."

"You wanna try it out?"

The thought of the two of them experimenting with this is something so embarrassing and uncomfortable Reese cannot even imagine it. "Oh, no. I'm... I'm good for now."

"You'll thank me later." Finch's surety that this is an excellent idea is ridiculous and charming. 

John seems to think so too a bit, but he leans forward to watch the outdoor cam Finch has already set up, eager to get to work. "You know, Trask may seem like a harmless bag of wind, but I've been fooled before. If he bought a gun, I'd just like to know why."

Finch is holding some silver electronic doodad in his hands, multicolored wires spilling out beneath it. "Only one way to find out."

"We're going to hack his wi-fi?"

"We're gonna hack _all_ of them." He sits to get to work at his portable station. "If the threat's in the building, we should get to know our neighbors."

"You're into sixteen networks already?"

"When the phone company puts in your wi-fi, the password is your phone number. Most people never even change it. The other ones might actually take a minute." John looks over at him, slightly horrified but more than a little impressed. Cams of every sort start appearing one by one on the screen. "Once we're in, we can turn every webcam, nanny cam, security system, and laptop on the network into our eyes and ears."

"Just like the Machine..." 

"I suppose... If one apartment building were the _entire world_..." His eyes widen as he types, imagining the enormity of the data, the work, the information.

They're getting gossipy info quickly. John really leans into this Rear Window stuff. A man is trying to cover the shoulders of the woman he's standing with with the pashmina over her. "Well, Lily the cook seems to be dating Rick from the penthouse." That gets a half-interested "hmm," as a reply from Harold. 

"And Amber in 174 is..." We see the cam with them. She's pulling her leg up and open in a yoga pose, perched on one foot in a sports bra and panties. Finch's eyes narrow slightly over the tea cup he's holding. "Healthy."

They watch her go through her routine. "Somehow I doubt that's what alerted the machine." But they are men and men are weak and venal and so they watch her, leaning their heads and bodies with her as she leans into a new pose. 

Finally, Reese thinks he has a toehold on something. "Got one, Finch." His shutter clicks. He's got his big camera lens out again, watching a room across the courtyard. This couldn't get any more Jimmy Stewart if he tried. "Doug Stanley, security guard." He's watching the man arguing with someone else. "He's been hunting a man who's been stealing jewelry out of women's apartments."

Finch is at his laptop, cheek perched on his fist. He looks up gradually as he formulates a theory. "Maybe Trask is the thief, planning to kill Doug to cover his crimes."

"Or Trask knows who the thief is and now they're planning to kill him." I appreciate John trying to keep an open mind on this one.

More time passes. Now it's dinnertime, Chinese takeout noodles straight out of the box, at least for Finch. Reese is too serious to eat. Finch gestures with his chopsticks at the screen. "That's the landlord, Alan Holt." The man's in the courtyard, having a testy conversation with the super.

"Doesn't look like Trask is the employee of the month. Maybe he's about to snap and kill his boss."

Finch turns his entire body to lean back and look at him. _Don't get any ideas._

More time passes. Finch has a whole big corkboard covered in pictures as his substitute for the cracked glass. He has more that need to be considered and he tacks them up one by one.

"Why did the Machine give us his number? Is Trask in trouble... or is he the problem?" 

"Well, you're not going to get it staring at the wall. We need to do some legwork." John lifts his hand over his useless busted leg and drops it back down.

Finch gets the picture as much as he hates it. "Right..."

So Harold is out on his reconnaissance mission, as awkward and nervous as someone doing spywork can be. He's down by the circuit breaker. "I'm in position. Make it quick, please."

Back up in the apartment, John's in the bathroom and on the phone. Water is just spewing out of the sink. "Mr. Trask, this is John Hayes in 521. I'm having a bit of a problem." And we know immediately what that problem's origin is, the big claw hammer Reese brings up beside him.

This pulls Trask out of his apartment cursing, just past Finch who is hiding under a stairwell nearby. As soon as he's gone, he gets to work with a set of lock picking tools. He's in so fast! Good job, Finch! He's learning.

Inside, the lock tools go in one vest pocket, and a tiny webcam comes out of the other. 

"I've planted the cameras, Mr. Reese," he says over the com. "I'm starting the search."

John can't really reply at the moment, because he's with Trask in the bathroom. Meanwhile, Trask is working, complaining, and still blathering on about Florida.

"I haven't seen damage like this since Hurricane Opal trashed my yacht." It's endless. He looks the sink up and down. "Looks like somebody went at this with a hammer." Well, he's good at diagnostics for what that's worth.

Meanwhile, the search continues in Trask's apartment. It's a mess of work tools and an old cloth recliner. Dude junk is everywhere. This is a man who lives alone in what looks like my grandfather's basement in the 90s. "No sign of a gun..." There's a CRT TV showing some grainy football in the back. Finch opens a drawer and makes a discovery. "But I doubt if he's just a collector of bullets." They disappear back in the drawer. "So who does he want to shoot?"

Repair work is not going well upstairs. "Of course, I didn't bring the right one. I'll be right back." He stands and Reese is immediately trying to give his warning low and inconspicuously into his com.

"Okay, just a minute." Just a minute? Finch, you don't know how long any of this takes. Just leave, the stakes are too high!

The next report from Reese is about Trask in the courtyard, "headed your way." His voice is sterner now, beginning to become really concerned. Why is Harold still in there? Trask bumps into that landlord guy but it only delays him a second.

Meanwhile, Finch is still digging, like an idiot. 

"Finch." 

Now that's a warning, one completely ignored, because Harold has found a stack of photos. They're all of that woman Lily, one after another, with creepy sharpie text on some of them like "She doesn't love him!!!"

"He's obsessed with her. I'm afraid we're not the only ones spying on our neighbors, Mr. Reese."

Reese cannot press him more. "Harold, get out of there now." _I'm using your given name, for god's sake, do this._

Finch stashes the pictures back away and steps out... too late. Trask may not see him exactly coming out of his apartment, but now in this basement area, there's nowhere else he could have been. They look at each other, both wide-eyed but for different reasons. 

"Finch, did you get out of there? Finch?"

But he can't answer, because he's trying to just slip by and say nothing like nothing ever happened. Luckily, he gets to a service elevator just before Trask catches up to him when he sees his door still partly open. Finch smashes at the close door button and fortunately it works. 

"I could use a hand here." Harold says with deep concern and insistence along his customary understatement.

"Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on." John's not used to doing the HQ work. He wheels himself to the monitors with the cam videos so he can tell Finch what's happening. Trask's at the breaker. "Okay, he's going to kill the elevator."

Finch hops out at the next random floor with his arms up by him in this adorably alarmed fey way. Just in time, too, because out go the lights. Trask's on his way upstairs again on foot, calling for security on his walkie-talkie. Reese feeds Finch location advice as he flees.

"Take the east stairs up three flights and you're home. But move quick, he'll be on your floor in about 40 seconds."

Finch limps forward as fast as his body goes. "I feel like a rat in a maze." He's so out of breath. It's such a decline from when he was still with Nathan, jogging through the park. "How do you put up with this?"

He turns a corner. Shit. It's the security guard. Finch freezes, and just looks at him. He knows he's caught.

"Doug, I just caught a guy breaking in. He was just in my apartment," Trask says over the radio.

Reese pipes into Harold's ear. "Keep walking, Finch. You'll be fine." Yeah, that might work for Reese, with his confident white guy magic hall pass to everywhere, but Finch is an awkward guy, nervous and conspicuous in even the best scenarios.

Trask's still giving his description. "5'9", glasses. He walks with a limp. I think he might be that thief you've been looking for." The limp is a dead giveaway, and Finch can never hide it. He tries to keep walking nonchalantly past the security guy, but he has to do it unevenly.

"Hey." Nope, didn't make it. He crushes his lips closed and turns around. Security guard flicks his fingers. _Come here._ Finch has no choice.

"What was that security guard doing in that apartment?" Reese grabs the laptop. It's definitely curious, but what the hell is Finch supposed to do now? For a start, he just lets the guy pat him down. He didn't steal anything and the cams are already in place, so search away. Although the lock picks will be a little tricky to explain, if he come across those. 

John's discovering that Mr. Security is never going to uncover that thief he's looking for, because he is that thief. He's on video pulling out necklaces from someone's jewelry box.

"Finch... I'm pretty sure Doug knows you're not the thief. He is." He smashes the enter key on the laptop with basically his entire fist. "And I'm sending you the proof."

Mr. Security's found Finch's cell. "Nice phone," he says. More than you know, guy.

"Can I show you something?" Harold takes the phone back and holds it up. There's the video again, Mr. Security pulling up the necklace out of the box. Wouldn't it be great if it were so easy to have the exact video you wanted cued to exactly the perfect time whenever you wanted to show it to someone?

Trask comes back over the line. "Doug? Is he up there? Have you found him yet?" Mr. Security is the one frozen now, his mouth open. The tables turning happened quickly.

Finch's voice is much smoother now, and he watches this man with mercenary intent. He is as cool as he ever gets in these moments he knows he's in control of a situation through knowledge. "So we can call the police... or you can forget you saw me, and I'll forget I saw you."

Security pulls up his walkie-talkie as Trask asks again. "He's not on two." Good choice. He looks at Finch with utter contempt, but there's absolutely nothing he can do.

And that means Finch is free. He walks away relatively calmly from there. In a safer hallway somewhere, he continues his conversation with Reese about the case. 

"So Trask is armed, has a dangerous fixation on Lily, and he just chased me up three floors. Safe to say, he's our perpetrator."

"I don't know, Finch, sure you don't want to double check with your _Machine_?" If Finch can be described as the Machine, it is only as a clever but limited prototype.

"Yes, that joke _never_ gets old."

2005, IFT. Harold runs into Nathan's office. He's always running in these memories. He's in his IT persona here, wearing just a white dress shirt and a tie along with some slacks. But he's desperate for whatever he's trying to do right now. He's hurrying through the room, looking for something to avert this disaster at the last minute.

Nathan's at his desk and he has no clue what's happening. "Harold? Is everything okay?"

Uh, no, it is not. Harold throws a usb drive into the slot in Nathan's laptop and douses it in coffee.

"What the hell?" The screen BSODs. SYSTEM FAILURE.

"We have company." And he stands up straight. Their company is already in the room. It's Alicia again. She's got her followers with her, of course.

"Sorry to pop up unannounced, Nate." No, she's not. 

Nathan doesn't think so either. "I guess we're not doing this over drinks."

Alicia's assistant whispers something to her. Finch looks over at Nathan, nervous. They're talking about him.

Nathan nods over. "He works here. Even _I_ need technical support sometimes." Or all the time. He waves Harold away to leave to let the adults talk. But Harold leaves a piece of himself behind, a pen camera that he quietly sets on the table.

Alicia starts in as soon as they're alone. "Nathan, you remember Deputy Director Weeks."

Weeks stands with his head up, looking furious. He's got a trenchcoat on like he's wearing a secret agent ID badge.

"The man in charge!" Nathan says with a smile. "I hope I'm not in trouble."

"The nine digits you gave us are the Social Security number of a man named Gordon Kurzweil. He's one of ours."

Harold sits down at his little glass desk to watch this explanation unfold. It will all be new information to him too as to how this worked out. As he told Nathan, only the Machine knows the truth.

"He's a DIA case officer. Top secret clearance," Weeks continues. "Been acing FBI background checks for 20 years." As he talks, the Machine is profiling Nathan, identifying him in the video she's now getting from Finch's pen. "We surveilled Kurzweil for two weeks, got nothing. And _just_ when we were thinking you sold us a bill of goods, he breaks pattern. Goes for a drive." The Machine is still identifying the people in the room, cataloging them. Facial analysis, gait analysis. "At a park in Bethesda, a Syrian businessman drops his phone. Kurzweil picks it up, and via coded SMS, he arranges to sell 26 pounds of weapons-grade uranium to the Iranian government."

Nathan looks so smug. Harold was right. Of course he was. "So I guess the number panned out." Alicia looks as aghast by all this as she is impressed.

"What I need you to explain to me is..." Weeks says, "how did some damn computer program spot a traitor when federal agents couldn't?" Because she's looking at a hell of a lot more than they are. And she's not just some program.

"Honestly? Not a clue." That is indeed honest. Weeks cocks his head. "The machine will deliver actionable intelligence in time to thwart any threat to national security, but its operating system... is a black box."

"And if we want to direct this machine at a specific target?" This request is exactly why it has to be a black box. Finch listens on outside as the Machine recognizes Alicia.

"No need. It already watches _every_ target."

"You're asking us to take a _lot_ on faith here, Nathan. A piece of software we can't inspect, can't control or modify." Alicia doesn't like this at all, but of course, that's precisely why Harold made his Machine this way. "That only feeds us intel when it feels like it?"

"When it _perceives a threat_." Harold has instructed Nathan well on how to describe this. "Look, I'm sorry, folks, but it's the only way that we can keep it and us protected. If no human sees what the machine sees, then _technically_ , no one's fourth amendment rights have been violated." Yeah, good luck with that one, Nathan. And _technically_ , she's a living being so... 

And that being has identified Weeks now too.

"Why don't you focus on your computer, Mr. Ingram, and leave the constitutional concerns to us?" Because you're soulless drones, Weeks, that's why. The Machine was born of love and care for people, not a thirst for power.

Nathan's voice hardens up. "Because I'm a citizen too, and I'm a lot more comfortable having this machine watch my every move..." he takes a breath, "than someone like you."

Weeks is livid, of course, but what can he do? The thing _works_. Finch is still listening, rapt. His friend, their collective UI, is doing excellent work.

"So it will remain a closed system, fully autonomous?" Alicia asks. Nathan nods.

Weeks is still not pleased. He wants a weapon, not a shield. "All we get is... a number?"

"Did you need more than a number to pick up Kurzweil? The software told you to take a closer look, so you did. It's a black box. That's the deal. Take it or leave it." This is why Nathan is great. He's cool as a cucumber dealing with these people.

"I'm not accustomed to having contractors dictate terms." Well, got some bad news for you, guy. "If you're going to be supplying crippled software, maybe we need to revisit the question of price." Weeks can only imagine someone would do this or anything else for money, because small people like him only understand personal gain. Anything beyond themselves is an unknowable mystery. 

Nathan smiles again. "Why don't you tell him the price negotiated, Alicia?"

She stiffens. "Mr. Ingram felt that this project was his duty as a citizen, not a businessman." Nathan is pleased as punch. Suck it, Weeks. "He's building the machine for one US dollar."

Weeks absolutely hates this, but he knows he's beaten, and so does Nathan. "I suppose I don't have a choice." No, you don't. Get out, chump. Outside, Harold loves this too. A tiny smile creeps across his lips. 

The Machine likes it less. She immediately identifies Weeks as a threat. She'll keep her ten thousand eyes on him. And we see that Finch has been seeing all that she's been coming up with through the meeting. She's talking to him as much as herself.

"I know, I know," he says to his frightened daughter.

And we're back to 2012 again. The Machine is watching the inhabitants of the apartment building, including Lily, who we see through a cam pointed between the slats of a heating vent.

"I don't know what to do anymore. I don't how else to say no. He's always right there." Ugh, poor Lily. "Even when I can't see him, I can feel his eyes on me." Yep. And not just his, sorry.

John is concentrating as he files down a key. "It's a bump key." He blows the metal filings away. He's done. "A hardware hack." Finch hacks software, Reese hacks hardware. Harold stands above him, watching with his hands on his back. "Just stick it in, twist, give it a little jolt. And it'll open any lock in the building. You won't be caught with nowhere to run again." Finch almost getting caught scared John. He's able to deal on the fly, but Finch needs help. He smiles as he hands over his prize.

"And this is everything you've found on the woman that Trask is obsessed with?" Finch sits to read as John sits back sipping coffee. He gets to be the one with a whole profile to present now. Lily is from Georgia, working her way up now in a bistro. "Romantically linked to Rick Morris, a powerful restaurateur." There's a picture of them smiling. Finch is impressed. He'd be pleased to have presented this himself. "This is very nice work, Mr. Reese."

"Well, I have used a computer before." But not like Harold. No one has. "But we can't get video from her place."

"She changes her wi-fi password every day. Random alphanumerics. You gotta love a girl with good security habits." 

They head to the window. John's back to his whole Rear Window business and Finch stands next to him with his arms folded.

"So Trask has been snapping pictures of her. Are we sure that means he wants to kill her?" Yeah, I mean, you're snapping pictures of her literally as we speak.

Finch comes armed with information, always ever. "76% of all female homicide victims are stalked before they're murdered." He keeps his eyes focused on this woman. Suffering of any form in others, particularly fear and misery in women and children, the defenseless, is absolutely intolerable for him. Lily walks through the courtyard and Trask is there, by the roses, watching her pass.

"Well, I better keep an eye on her then."

"You're not tailing her to work?"

John wheels himself about. "I'm getting pretty good at this thing."

"Yes, I'm sure the CIA will be deeply impressed _when they shoot you_." Poor Finch, far more traumatized than John is by this experience. John's been shot before who knows how many times and he barely cares about his own life. None of this is new or shocking to him. But it's all terror for Harold. He cares about Reese, genuinely has come to trust him, to need him, far more than he ever expected to. He needs his help and his companionship, and watching John nearly die right in front of him took something serious out of him.

"Just feeling a little restless here, Finch."

" _Use the cushion_." Sweet Harold, trying to solve a feeling of the heart with a little physical comfort, albeit the most embarrassing physical comfort possible. John looks up at him. _Really?_

"The numbers never stop coming in, Finch. What are we going to do if another one comes in while I'm sidelined?"

Finch is working on that, stuffing a pill bottle into a plastic bag. "I'm sure I'd think of something."

"And I know you won't carry a gun," John says, wheeling himself closer, looking up at him with soft eyes full of concern. "But if I'm sending you back in the field, you're getting some basic self-defense." _If I'm sending_ you _back in the field_. The roles reversed, John finds himself in the boss' seat and he's terrified ordering someone he cares about into danger.

"No, I really don't think–" The idea of fighting someone, hurting someone else deliberately himself is unacceptable to Harold. It's not who he is now, it's not how he lives. He doesn't want this, but John isn't going to stop.

"No, listen up. If Trask comes at you, put your fingers straight out like this, and _strike at his eyes._ " He demonstrates on the air, poking an imaginary attacker's eyes right out of their invisible head.

Finch raises an eyebrow. "Poke him in the eyes? _That's_ your technique?" It's like getting rid of a shark.

"No, that's _your_ technique, and if that doesn't work, you can always take your thumb, jam it in his eye socket, and twist till you hit his brain." This gets acted out as well, in all seriousness.

"Please stop." Finch is not going to push his fingers through anyone's skull. He's absolutely aghast even thinking about it. He turns to leave and that leaves John with the screens while he does the legwork. All the people, all the cams, all the information.

Harold immediately gets to try the bump key. It slides in, he gives it a jiggle, then tugs out his phone to smack it in. Voila, the door opens. Nice trick.

It's Lily's room. John's in Harold's ear. "Trask is still in the courtyard, but I want eyes on Lily at work."

"I'll be with her shortly." He pulls out another miniature cam with all its wires. "If she is Trask's intended victim, I'd like a better view of the inside of her apartment instead of simply _peering_ at her through a window." 

The line between good surveillance and bad surveillance here is extremely blurry. Yeah, we know they're decent men who want to help and protect people, but even they did a little pervy viewing earlier. What have they seen of naked people, sexual situations, just everyday intimate lives? Their intent is good ultimately, but how could anyone ever tell the difference?

Harold takes down an air vent to pop the camera in and when his head pops up to look inside... he sees he's not the first with this idea. 

"Mr. Reese, there's already a camera here." He purses his lips together, shakes his head. He hates this, what's being done to this girl. He reaches up to it. "Basic consumer model. Wireless. Streaming to a hidden network." He turns around to see what it's been watching. Her bed, her mirror, her room. "The receiver it's paired with could be anywhere in the building. I think Trask has been watching her every move." And that's our job, dammit! Finch looks down at his little cam, and the larger one. "And I think Lily's been spied on enough." He rips the old one out with force. They'll have to find another way.

At the station, Fusco in his reading glasses is pulling printouts from the fax machine. "Cell phone location data..." Yes, it is, and something else. That picture of Finch and Reese again at the evidence locker. Carter comes by and rips it from his hands. "Hey, where you going?"

"To get lost." She swipes some random arrested man's phone and slides the sim out. "I need to dust this for prints. There you go." She hands it back but he thinks she's broken it. "So? Read a book."

Outside with her new sim the CIA doesn't know about yet in her phone, she goes for a walk. They're following her, so she's going to have to be clever. She hurries along, keeping an eye on the conspicuous agent, staying a half block ahead always. She wanders into a building and accosts the first guy she sees.

"Sir, NYPD, I need your jacket. Now."

"You're requisitioning my jacket?" Poor guy. He's so confused. She leaves him with her jacket as if it was some kind of exchange. With her tiny amount of anonymity that will only last a second, she flags down a cab. Finally, she will be moving free, and she heads up to Queens. Idiot CIA dudes are left in the dust.

Fusco's phone is ringing. He pulls up his glasses to read the screen. Uh, oh. Off come the glasses, up comes the phone. "Hey, you guys got a real problem. Carter's got info from one of your cell phones. She's tracking you."

Finch has called him from a fancy looking restaurant. He's having a small salad with some fruit. There's water in his wine glass. "I'm aware that she's looking for me. I don't suppose you know _why_."

"No, not yet." Fusco face softens. "How's our guy?" Aww. He's _our_ guy now, his and Finch's.

"Alive. Hidden. Did you receive the package I sent?" As ever, Finch is running multiple processes at once. While this conversation is going, he's watching Lily as she smiles, talking to another customer. 

"Yeah, I got it right here." It's one of those interoffice type envelopes with the string tie. Inside is that pill bottle in the plastic bag Finch prepared earlier. "What, you run out of Adderall?"

"Our _friend's prints_ are on it." And Finch's too, since he wasn't wearing gloves when he set this up. But we're going to ignore that. "I need you to throw the CIA off his trail. Take a road trip, Detective. Connecticut's nice this time of year." Click. Finch is all business.

Fusco, to his credit, is immediately on it, eager to help. He stuffs the bottle back into the envelope and gets ready to leave.

Lily's checking in on tables, making sure everyone likes the food. Harold, watching her, gets a call from John, who's really taking to his temporary Finchness.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Finch," he says elegantly. This may be the only time he calls him that. "How's it going with Lily?"

"This may be the best catered stakeout in history." He's got his knife and fork busy.

"Don't eat in the field, Finch. Never know when you'll have to move fast." Oh, come on, John, Kara taught you better than that. You've got to blend. 

"Any progress on the landlord's email?"

"Still working on that one."

"What about the camera I found at Lily's? If we can trace it to Trask, we can get him fired. Maybe even arrested."

John's holding it, peering at it. "Still trying to break into the hidden wireless network." Seriously, give Finch like five minutes and you'd be done. Instead, he's having lunch. "No luck cracking the password yet." I'm just going to assume Finch left him with some automated cracking software he wrote, because although I'm sure Reese is decent with computers, it's asking an awful lot for him to be able to do all this hardcore hacking. 

"But I did find out some information about our friend Trask. Turns out there used to be a _Mrs._ Trask."

"Used to?" That doesn't sound good to Finch.

"She disappeared 13 years ago. Trask never called the cops." He's still down there in the courtyard, working on those roses. Those must be the best pruned roses in the whole world. "Told everyone she went to be with family in Boca Raton."

Finch is very displeased. "And I'm guessing she's not in Boca."

"As far as I can tell... she's not anywhere."

Meanwhile, Harold is watching Lily get a delivery, a dozen red roses. "Maybe Lily's not his first." Lily is really upset to be getting these roses. She signs for them because she has to and it's not the poor delivery guy's fault, but she really just wants to scream. "And I think it's safe to say she knows she has a stalker." Lily gives the roses to the bartender, tells him to get rid of them. Every second she's holding them just makes her more sick. The bartender is awfully relaxed about throwing the flowers away. Seems like a question or something about that might be in order. A request like that can't mean anything good. 

Finch feels terrible watching her suffer. "Poor girl seems miserable. She just threw a gift in the trash. Bouquet of roses." Reese sits up, looks back down at Trask, ever pruning his bushes.

Carter's apparently been out stalking these cell location records for hours, because it's dark now and she's still at it, still wearing that random man's coat. 

"So, this is where your trail ends, Burdett. Where'd you go from here?" She looks around, watching for him. The Machine is watching her, minding anyone risking her family like this and minding everyone in general. 

The payphone next to Carter rings. She looks around. _All right_ , she thinks. She'll take the bait. 

It's Finch on the end of the line. "You're wasting your time, Detective. I falsified the location data this morning." Of course he did. She's still looking around for him here. 

"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess your name isn't Burdett."

"Do you think finding _me_ will lead you to my partner? Are you still trying to make that arrest?"

"Oh, no," she says, and she means it. "His CIA pals got that out of my system. I wanted to _catch him_ , not kill him."

"What do you want now?" Good question. Does Carter even really know?

She sighs. Nope. "Still working that out. But if I'm going to keep lying to government agents to protect you two, I'm going to need a damn good reason." It's a fair point, and one Finch expected. In fact, he hoped for it. "I want answers. I need to know what you do."

"Turn around, Detective." 

She does, and she sees him, sitting at a table in a cafe window just 20 feet away, dressed to the nines and on his cellphone, so different than the two times she'd seen him before. He hangs up and looks at her, stone faced. It's her move now. This is an intense moment for them and an incredibly dangerous one for Finch. He's trusting that that decency he's seen in her, that goodness in her that Reese cares about so deeply, will be enough to keep them safe. Them, and the number he needs her to help next as he can't. 

She walks up quietly and sits across from him. She's much more confident here than he is, almost half a smile on her face. There's no pleasure in Finch. He's as pushed back into his seat as he can be, regarding her as if she still had her gun out aimed at his heart. And he's still so angry, livid that she would have nearly killed John when he had gone through such effort to save her, when he _believed_ in her. Harold blinks, waiting for her to move first.

"How's your friend?" It's almost sarcastic.

Harold doesn't answer right away. He's still judging her, narrowing his eyes trying to read her intentions, decide her fitness for what he's about to propose. 

She chuckles a little, leans forward. "You're going to have to tell me something. Like who the hell are you, and what _exactly_ is going on here?"

He looks away, takes a breath. He's made a decision, one he is very uncertain of, but there's no other choice. There is a life here to save, and even if she almost took John's, this one needs help and Carter needs to _understand._

"When I was nine years old, my brothers decided I needed to learn to swim, so they tossed me into the deep end of the pool. Took a few minutes... but I figured it out." So much here. First, does Finch have brothers? Maybe metaphorical brothers, childhood friends? Or is this entirely made up for effect? Also, can Finch swim now? Maybe, but surely not without some difficulty.

He tells the story with his eyes locked on her, as deadly serious as he can be. He purses his lips. This is such a risk, but he has no choice. She shakes her head slightly, not sure what he means, but desperate to understand.

He looks away, nods to himself. Yes, he'll have to do this. It's the only way. He looks into the distance, but not at nothing.

"Do you see that man, Detective?" She turns around. There's a guy getting buzzed at the bar, tapping his foot, jittery in his seat. "His name is Derek Watson, 39 years old. 18 months ago, he lost his job." Carter turns back to look at Finch, whose name she doesn't even know yet. "He tried to keep up with the mortgage as best he could, but the money ran out eventually. Lost his house... and his wife left soon after."

And now, he puts the intensity of his eyes back onto her. "Derek Watson is about to be involved in a violent crime." She looks back at the man again. _What?_ It's so crazy just to say. "I don't know what exactly, but believe me, _something_ is going to happen."

She scoffs. "You can't know that." But he just stares a hole straight through her. Harold is as frightening as he gets like this, absolutely deadly serious. She _will_ believe him. She will believe him, because otherwise people will die. And seeing him like this, she really starts to, as much as her logic tells her it's nuts.

"Did you bring your service weapon, Detective? Sorry to toss you into the deep end, but as you know, my friend is _indisposed_." He just looks at her as he stands, cold and brutally serious. This is as close to telling her how he really feels about what she did as he can come. He doesn't need to. She knows. She can see it in the light in his eyes. 

He walks away with the book he'd been reading, and without another word. She turns around, but not to watch Finch go, but to look at the man at the bar again. Can any of this be real?

Outside, Carter makes a call back to Homicide to get background on this guy Derek. Guy on the line confirms his name and that his house was foreclosed. "No current address." She's watching him, looking lost and nervous against a wall. "No priors, no arrests, a couple of unpaid parking tickets, but that's about it."

Carter makes a leap of logic. "Hey, what's the name of the bank that took his house?"

"Truprime Mortgage." Oh, and look at what company Derek just happens to be hanging out in front of. And out of the bank comes some business dude in a suit. 

"Who filed the paperwork for the bank?" As Carter works this out, so does the Machine. She outlines Derek in red and black as a danger.

"John Dalton. Is this for an open homicide?" Derek puts up his hoodie, starts to follow Mr. Business.

"I'll have to get back to you on that." It's not open... yet. Maybe it doesn't have to be at all.

Back in CIA land, Snow's packed in a car with Preppy and two useless agent dudes in the back and he's as angry as ever. Still has his coffee, though.

"Finest surveillance training on the planet, and a New York cop gave you the slip." Carter is no ordinary cop. That's why John and Harold love her. Or at least John does. Harold will come back around to her in time. "Well, I know she's not in here, guys!" They get out. Daddy is angry.

Preppy's still working on the task he was given. "Reese hasn't turned up dead, so odds are he's found a safe house."

"Expand the search. All apartments and hotels rented in the last two days." Two days? What?

"But if he's anywhere–" 

"Just... make it happen."

Finch is following poor Lily, walking down one of those streets covered with construction scaffolding and industrial work lights that make up what seems like half of New York City. "You have eyes on Trask, Mr. Reese?"

"Where the hell have you been?" 

"Now you know how I feel!" Aww, the mutually worried bickering is adorable. "Lily's headed home. Is it safe for her there?"

"I'm watching Trask right now. And I'm not sure she's his target." Trask's still down by the roses, but now he's digging what looks to be a pretty significant hole. "I think Trask might be after Rick."

"Why?"

"Well, he spent the afternoon sniffing around Rick's apartment. And if I didn't know better, I'd say now he's digging a grave." Yeah, that seems bad.

"Trask gets rid of the boyfriend, and has Lily all to himself." Reese doesn't respond, still busy watching. But Finch can sense something's bothering him. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah," he says with a bit of a sigh. "I'm just sick of being cooped up and uh... staring at screens all day." He turns around to look at those screens and something catches his eye.

"I'd rather be doing that than trudging around half of Manhattan. I have half a mind to spot Lily cab fare." They're both so desperate to get back to what they're best at. They're a perfectly matched set, but this inversion is uncomfortable at best for both of them.

John's worried now. "Finch, how fast can you get here?"

"About 15 minutes. Why?"

"Because we just ran out of time." The screen cam has Trask with his new gun, loading it up in his room. "I think Trask is making his move tonight."

Trask's outside in his winter coat. "Checking your mail, huh, Mr. Morris?" He corners the guy. "Hey, uh, I think I figured out why your place is flooding. It just uh, it just needs a special faucet." He's all awkward nerves. "Why don't we, uh, why don't we go downstairs and check it out? If uh, if you like it, I can install it tomorrow, so why don't we go down to the basement?"

Up in his room, John's wasting no time. He's got his crutch out, and he's furiously tearing fabric up to jury-rig whatever disaster machine he's making here. 

Morris doesn't want to go anywhere with Trask. "I don't need to see anything. Just have it fixed." He tries to go around, but Trask moves in front of him again, fidgeting at his pocket.

"You need to stay away from Lily." Finally, we're done playing games. 

"What? Have you lost your mind?" 

John is almost done with his crutch molotov he's making, about to douse it in rubbing alcohol. Finch's voice comes over the line. "I've called the car. I can be there in five."

"That'll be four minutes too late." He wheels himself away.

"She doesn't love you, man," Trask says. "All right? You need to leave her alone." Oh, great, two weirdo men deciding between each other what a woman feels for them.

John rolls himself into the hallway with a zippo lighter in his mouth. He gets into position and flicks it lit. The soaked fabric on the crutch burns quickly.

"You got some kind of pathetic old-man crush here, Trask? Gonna punch me out, take Lily to the dance? You're not her boyfriend, and you're not her hero." Neither of you assholes is her boyfriend, and frankly, neither are John and Harold. So many men bickering over the fate of this woman and absolutely none of them asks her what she wants. 

John shoves the flames up toward the smoke alarm as things escalate downstairs.

"You're just the damn janitor, so if my toilet clogs, I'll let you know. Otherwise, step aside." Morris shoves him aggressively and Trask pulls out his gun in turn. Morris sees it and holds up his hand, but they're both interrupted by the squealing of the fire alarm. Now they're surrounded by various busybody neighbors.

"Is the building on fire?" Trask has no choice but to go check it out and leave Morris behind. 

Later, Lily is talking on the phone again, desperate and scared, likely an old call being reviewed. Probably to another woman, but again, no one talks to the women so no one but the Machine knows about this. She pays attention even if all the Y chromosomes are too busy. "I come home and things have moved like he's been inside my apartment. I'm scared of what he's going to do."

Finch is still following her and John comes over the line. "Finch, this isn't over. Trask will try again. And he's still obsessed with Lily."

"Then we should consider more aggressive tactics." Harold's not usually the one promoting that idea, but he's also usually not the one actively outside trying to keep their number alive.

Lily's phone beeps and she pulls it out of her purse to check. Finch has cloned her phone so he sees a series of creepazoid texts from BLOCKED. She gets increasingly upset as they come.

"Did you get my flowers?"  
"Why don't you call me?"  
"We need to talk!"  
"I can see you..."

Finch is so upset for her. "He's terrorizing her!" He clicks his phone off. "I want Trask out of the building _tonight_."

Trask's finally done with the fire alarm, and he comes back to his apartment. It's dark, but he's not alone. He turns a corner and it's John, up on his feet with crutches.

"Mr. Hayes!"

John's got his cold and scary whisper voice of doom on. "My name isn't Hayes."

"Well, then I'm going to ask you to leave." 

"Actually... you're the one who'll be leaving." He holds up the packet of photos of Lily and tosses them over to him. 

Trask looks up at him. Now he's worried. "Hey... I don't know what you think–"

"I know about the roses... and the texts... and the hidden cameras."

"No, I would never–"

He takes a step forward, and John brings up his pistol to aim at his head.

"I know about the gun, Trask, and I know you were ready to kill her boyfriend tonight."

Trask shakes his head. "He's not her boyfriend. You don't understand."

John's not having any of this. It's just a series of demands from the man with control of the situation. "Now. You're going to pack your bag and leave this place." He cocks the gun. "And no matter how much you think you love her, you're never coming back." 

What's the plan after this? Let's say Trask leaves Lily alone. John and Harold think it's likely he killed his wife and they saw him openly threaten a man with a gun earlier tonight. Trask is clearly someone they believe is a violent psychopath. Are they really going to just let him go, or is this just getting him out of the building in an emergency fashion to be dealt with later?

"Please..." Trask begs. "I love this job." That moves John absolutely not at all. "And I do care for Lily, but not like that." He shakes his head more, emphasizes. " _Not like that_."

And for the first time, that gets John's attention. He's a trained interrogator. He knows when people are telling the truth, when they truly feel their meaning. He can feel it too. 

Upstairs, Finch has just gotten home to find his network sniffer has finally found its target. He kneels in front of the laptop to type. The name comes up: Rick Morris. And just then, John comes over the line as Finch discovers the truth and so many more creepo pictures of Lily.

"Finch, listen up. Trask didn't take those photos of Lily. He _stole_ them from the penthouse."

"I know," Harold says, his eyes wide as he reads. "He didn't plant the cameras either. Trask isn't the stalker..." And now he realizes how incredibly dangerous this is for Lily right this minute. SHIT SHIT SHIT.

Oh, god, Lily's getting out of the shower, toweling her hair in her pajamas. And look who it is, Mr. Stalker himself, Morris. "Didn't you like the flowers, babe?"

She gasps, holds the towel in front of her, all she has in defense. "How did you get in here?"

"I thought it could just be you and me tonight." And every night, on and on to our deaths. Or yours at least. 

Back at the room, Finch is terrified for her and he gets up off his knees to grab John's camera and run to the window. As he suspected, a scary looking man in a dress shirt is cornering small Lily in her bedroom. "Mr. Reese! We're gonna need a little help."

Ugh, god, Lily's misery continues. She tries to get to her phone, but Mr. Sicko grabs her.

"Get out of my apartment now," she says, but it's far too late for that.

"You don't mean that," he says with a smile. Men like this always think they know what women mean, because they don't see them as having minds and agency of their own. 

"Rick... please... this has to stop. The phone calls, the flowers–"

"Oh, come on, those were just a little thank you for our date last night."

"That wasn't a date. We were going to the same party."

He laughs creepily. "You're such a tease." Oh, god, Finch, hurry up already.

"You made me share a cab with you and then you followed me all night." Oh, this poor girl. I want to take her away and shove this guy into his own dick.

"I'm just trying to help you, sweetie. Come on, I could do so much for you in this town." Surprise, a rich white man believes he is god's gift to the world and his blessed power can be bestowed on those he sees as worthy. Worthy of being _owned_. "Make you executive chef!"

"I don't want to work for you. I just want you to leave."

Now it's getting even worse. "The super told me to stay away from you. Did you," he scoffs, "tell him about us?" ACK ACK ACK. "Did you lie and say you don't love me?" Girl, run, oh god.

She shakes her head. Her "no" is barely audible.

"Now why would you want to hurt me like that, baby?" She keeps shaking her head, and he keeps escalating. "Would you like it if I hurt you?"

She tries to yell no, but he crushes his hand over her mouth and slams her into the wall. Her screams are muffled under his palm. "All I've ever done is look out for you, Lily." Again, he slams her into the wall with a bang. "And it's time you showed a little gratitude."

"Let her go, Mr. Morris!" It's Finch, finally there in the doorway, having run from halfway across the planet to get here. Morris is shocked to see him, but immediately makes a move to attack him.

Luckily, Finch remembers the one thing John taught him, and he stiffens two fingers to jab them toward Morris' eyes. Morris yelps in pain and doubles over instantly. Harold looks at his hand, amazed and shocked that actually worked and he goes to try to help Lily. He grabs her arm and pulls her out the door. 

But Morris is right behind them. Next step is twisting a thumb in his brain, I guess. Trask shows up just then and presses Morris back by his chest. "I believe I told you to leave her alone."

And... Morris grabs a letter opener from the desk there and jams it deep into Trask's arm. He falls back and Morris is about to turn back to Finch and Lily, but just then he gets a crutch in the back. John has finally made his way here too, and although he's in rough shape, he's never not a formidable adversary.

The crutch turns out to be a useful weapon, although most things are in Reese's hands. John shoves the guy into the wall with it, keeping him back. When Morris comes closer, John punches him squarely in the ribs and he doubles over. But Morris still has the letter opener, and he slashes in the air with it at John's face. John ducks out of the way and grapples with him only to get kicked in the stomach, right in the bullet wound. He groans in agony, but that's not enough to stop him. Pain never is. Morris keeps coming and John will fight him forever if he has to. But he doesn't. A few more punches and he shoves the guy back away, directly out through the window. 

Morris flies flailing through the glass and lands with a thud in the courtyard. John stands at the window and looks down at his failed opponent, barely out of breath.

In CIA car, Snow's still sipping that coffee. No one is better caffeinated. Preppy comes in excited. "We got something. Break-in at a veterinary clinic in northern Connecticut." He holds up a pic on his phone. It's Finch's bottle, of course. "Reese's prints were on a prescription bottle found at the scene."

Snow just looks at him. "Couldn't be telling me this while we drive?" Preppy looks sad. He's never going to get a thumbs up from dad. He starts the car and they're off.

The apartment building is now abuzz with police and activity. "Anonymous tip, my ass. This has got to be some kind of joke." It's our pal Mr. Security Guard, and he's taking a trip downtown. The gold necklace he stole earlier is still in his pocket. Maybe do a better job stashing in the future, should you ever see the light of day again.

EMTs are taking Morris away on a stretcher. He's in rough shape. "BP 90 over 50, thready pulse, multiple fractures, bleeding internally." Yeah, that's pretty much what happens when you tangle with John Reese.

Lily is talking to the cops about him, about how he stalked her and wouldn't leave her alone. Poor girl. "And if Ernie hadn't shown up when he did..." 

Next to her is Trask, who is just so jazzed to be the conquering hero as he's bandaged up from his letter opener stab wound. "That was nothing. Shoulda seen some of the guys they sent after me back in Miami. You do not want to mess around with the Cuban mafia."

It's time for new digs for Finch and Reese. John's up on a single crutch now. The worst he seems to suffer for all that is a little groan and wince of pain coming over the stair. "Here."

"What's this?" asks Finch as he takes a brown paper wrapped something.

"Trask's gun."

"Oh!" He instantly stiffens and tucks it away. He does not handle guns often, hates doing it, and always takes it incredibly seriously. "Good." At least they're getting rid of it. It will never be used for anything terrible.

And at some point while they were waiting for the police maybe, Finch did some more digging. This all would have been really useful information YESTERDAY. "You know, his name isn't Ernest Trask. It's Ernesto Machado." John is stunned. "He used to own six nightclubs in Miami, a yacht, a house in Coral Gables, and..." he hands over a printed newspaper clipping. It's Ernesto in more lush times with a wife in a slinky dress and...

"A pet tiger. It was all true."

"Even the part about it being bad for his health. He testified against the Cuban mafia in 1996. Still a price on his head." So why the hell is he telling everyone in listening distance all about it? What?

"He's in witness protection." Some protection! He's practically screaming for them to come find him again.

"That's why you couldn't find _Mrs._ Trask. She came with him from Miami, but without the houses and the clubs she didn't last long. She left him, moved in with relatives – in Boca Raton."

"How'd you find all that out?" Yeah, good question, John. And how come it didn't happen until just now?

"I'm good with computers."

"Be honest, Finch. There is no machine, is there? It's just _you_." He walks away from him. "I'll be ready when the next number comes." Will you? How? Where are you going? What is anyone's plan here?

"Funny you should mention that..." Finch says as he tucks Trask's gun down into the trash can to disappear. 

Carter's working her first number at that very moment. In a busy bar, she's tracking Derek the foreclosed. Derek is coming down some ornate wood railed stairs. 

He's got his eyes on Mr. Bank and he creeps toward him while Carter watches. And because she's watching, she sees the moment he pulls a pistol from his pocket. 

"Gun!" she yells and she tackles Derek face down to the bar as Mr. Bank looks on, horrified. It takes her a second to wrestle with him, but she bends his arm backwards and gets the gun away. "It's all right," she says in a sweet calm voice to all those around. "NYPD. Everything's under control."

She cuffs the man and yanks him forward to walk him out. But then her phone rings. 

"Get down." She shoves his face back into the bar. She's got to take this call.

It's Finch, and it's just one sentence.

" _That_ , Detective Carter, is what we do."

He hangs up, and now she knows it's for real. However it works and whatever it means, it and they are for real.

The Machine looks on, and now is able to downgrade Derek from red and black threat to white – averted and only of interest.

2005 again. It's a quiet celebration at IFT after hours. Nathan's uncorking champagne to fill business office mugs. Finch is sitting back looking satisfied, watching. On his screen, there's Kurzweil pleading guilty to espionage. 

Nathan hands over a mug and lifts his for a toast. "Well done, my friend." They clink and drink, and Nathan leans forward, smiling. "Now tell me... what on earth was it that made the Machine pick out Kurzweil's number?"

Finch's eyes sparkle. "You want me to pop the hood?"

Nathan nods, "Yeah." Of course, he does, this is incredible.

Finch punches up something, and we see the swirl of data and pixels that is the Machine as she thinks on his screen.

"November 2002. This isn't the first item chronologically, but it's the one that triggered a harder look."

"A gas station receipt?"

"18 of them. From a Shell station just outside of Towson, Maryland." Nathan just stares at him, amazed by him and what he's made. "Kurzweil stopped there every third Thursday of every even month, even if he'd filled up the day before. On 3 of his 18 visits, this SUV was present two hours before."

"A dead drop."

"The SUV was registered to the wife of a Turkish oil executive that paid for plane tickets used by an Iranian suspect in the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994." While Nathan leans back, stunned, Harold leans forward, so excited. He pinches at the air, imagining the complexity of what his Machine has gone through and grasped to make this possible. 

"The _thinnest thread_ connects Kurzweil and his contact... and the Machine could see it. It _knew_ , and it was _right_." He's so satisfied by this. There is nothing greater than that. The raw power of information, the most effective power there is. To _know_ and to be _right_.

Nathan can only just shake his head. "It does this... all the time... to all of us?" Harold sits back, smug. _You got it._ "That's... terrifying." He takes another swig of champagne. He needs it.

"It's probably a good thing that you're the only other person who will ever see how this Machine works." He and Nathan are the only people in the world he trusts. "When it's complete, I'll encrypt the OS so completely that no computer on Earth will ever crack it."

"Does it bother you? I mean..." Nathan tosses his head back and forth. "What you've achieved... is _historic_. But no one will ever know." The only person who needs to will know.

"It's the way it has to be, for sure."

"Sure of what?"

"Sure that they'll use it the way I intended."

"So you think the government would abuse this machine?" No, he knows that. Basically anyone would. The only reason it's used for good at all is because it was built by him and negotiated for by Nathan.

Harold scoffs and leans for the keyboard. "Denton Weeks has spent the last six months trying to tunnel into the machine by way of the NSA feeds." Nathan is horrified and looks over. Harold reassures him quickly. "He's failed, but he'll keep trying. And he won't be alone."

That is absolutely terrifying to Nathan. "I don't even want to think about what a man like Weeks would do with that kind of power."

"That's why we have to keep him or anyone else from ever getting their hands on it."

Nathan stands up. "You sure it was Weeks?"

Harold shuts his laptop. "The Machine told me. It has an instinct for self-preservation."

"You talk about that thing like it's alive."

"Shh," he says as she watches her fathers walk away. "It can hear you." 

And hear him she did. Although he is still one of her admins, the Machine classifies Nathan now as a possible threat. She'll keep her ten thousand eyes on him.


	13. POI 1x12 - Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John gets back to work and deep into Carter's recruitment while Harold has a close encounter with his past.

### POI 1x12 - Legacy

#### Landmarks

  * Nathan's son and Harold's adopted nephew Will is introduced
  * Will starts looking into his father and the Machine project
  * Carter and John meet face to face and talk for the first time
  * Carter and John actively work together on a case and she fully joins the team
  * John recruits Fusco to help spy on Finch and he finds some backstory
  * John learns about Will and Nathan



#### Injuries

  * **John**
    * Slashed on the hand with a broken bottle in a dirty alley fight



* * *

It's the Lyric diner, home of the famous eggs benedict. Or is that another of the various 50's diners that apparently are the only restaurants in New York other than expensive steakhouses?

Carter's looking over her shoulder nervously as she walks in. Today's a big day. She sits and waits at a table with her coffee, her hands folded anxiously in front of her. Other customers chit chat, waiters pass by. But she's only looking for one person, and he's not here yet. 

Her heart beats a little faster when a tall man in a suit comes in. She raises her head to look but it's the wrong suit and the wrong man. She sighs, disappointed, starting to believe he's not coming, but that's of course exactly when he appears like a wraith behind her. He's got nothing if not good timing.

"Your coffee's getting cold, Detective."

She looks up, tracks him as he passes her to sit across the table. He's looking smug. He's taking his near death experience at her hands pretty well.

"Nice suit," she says. He smirks.

"You finally found me. But I don't hear any sirens or see you reaching for your gun."

She looks away for a moment wondering how in the hell she got to this place. "I looked for a "I'm sorry I got you shot" card, but..." she shrugs. "They were all out." Oh, it's okay, Joss. Apparently John heals like the Wolverine, so it's fine.

He smiles. He loves this. He finally gets to talk to her, meet her, and she has to apologize to him too. It's rich.

"I had no idea what Snow was capable of... that he'd actually... try to _kill you_." She's still wrung out by it, watching him crumple in front of her like that, knowing it was all her fault. She remembers Yusuf, another man who trusted her that she threw to the wolves around her.

"Why did you contact me, Carter?" Also, _how_ did she contact him? Does he have a Batsignal? A Suitsignal? Maybe Finch called her again and gave her instructions?

"Got a lot of questions."

And he's got some compliments. "Well, you managed to lose your tail, that's quite a feat. Those CIA boys spend a lot of time learning how to be invisible."

"You think Snow is my only problem?"

"Is there another agency following you that I'm not aware of?" _Because I will totally beat them up for you if you would like that._

She leans in a bit for emphasis. "You've got an entire NYPD task force looking for you." She tilts her head. _You'd better take this seriously._ "Had to run two lights getting here just to make sure my own people weren't trailing me. I'm a cop, which means I've got rules." They all started out with rules, but learned the hard way they're all too often not worth much when they're needed. "Rules that can't be broken." 

She's so worried about this, going against every ethic, every instinct she has. She can't deny it, though. "But um... I want to know more." She looks so tender and open here. She wants more than anything to help others. And all she does is help dead people. The idea of helping people not get dead in the first place is extremely attractive to her.

John leans in too. He'll be more than happy to tell her, of course, but she needs to understand what she's asking for here. "Once you go down that road... there's no looking back." 

She scans his face. He's bouncing a bit, tapping his foot or something, excited to see where this goes, still half smirking. 

"How are you getting your information?" 

"All I can tell you is we hear about people in danger or people who are causing it." That literally is all he can tell you. He could say something something computer, but he's got nothing more clarifying than just that in the end. Ultimately, she knows almost everything that he knows already. Finch comes up with people who either need help or are a danger, they figure out which and save the day. That's it. That's the whole job. 

She looks down, thinking, unsure, worried. "Why me?"

He never looks away from her for a second with his sparkling blue eyes. "Because your moral compass is pointed in the right direction." She looks up, a bit touched, but he softens it to ease the moment. "Because I'm tired of you chasing me."

She almost smiles a little, but she's still thinking. She nods, continuing her questions. "How does this work?"

He pulls a paper out of his pocket and drops it on the table. She picks it up hesitantly, opens it up. It's just a name. Andrea Gutierrez. She repeats it, confused.

"Civil litigation attorney with a sealed juvie record. I need it unsealed, Carter."

She drops her head. "What did I just say about rules?" This is her test. They could always get Fusco to do this, he's got no qualms about anything, but this is for her. If she really wants to do this, if she wants to save lives for real, she needs to accept that this is what it takes. There are no straight lines here.

"You have your rules..." John says, in his elegant breathy whisper. "And you have the chance to save a life." She's taken a bit aback by that, to have it stated so plainly. But that's it, that's the deal. "It's your choice." They will not force her. She has to choose this endeavor with them for herself.

She looks him over, looks at the paper, looks so unsure. He stands, willing to give her space to decide. But before he goes, he puts something in her hand, making sure his fingertips slide across her skin for just a fleeting moment as he does. It's a flip phone, as low tech old school as it gets. "I'll be in touch." Touch is what John does.

She watches him walk away, a little scared and a lot uncertain.

And we're finally back at the library again after the long stretch away. Looks like Finch got a shorter haircut in the meantime. He's standing at the cracked glass, taping up photos. It's his usual task, but Reese can read him from a distance as he walks in and puts up his coat.

"You look worried, Finch." John's in a terrific mood now that he's back up on his feet and busy recruiting Carter. "Did your tailor move out of the city?"

Harold looks over at him, not in any joking mood, not that he really ever is anymore. "How was your breakfast meeting with Detective Carter?"

"You heard her." He knows Finch is always listening. It's part of their system, and John has come to like it. There's a freeing cleanness to being completely open to someone else. Nothing of John has to be hidden anymore and after so long he can breathe again. He walks over, casual, slyly smiling. "She wants to know how we get our information." 

Gone a little pale, Finch replies instantly, terrified of the idea, of the danger. "She can _never_ know about the Machine."

"I doubt if she'd believe it if I told her." Harold looks not at all soothed. He finally breaks eye contact and walks over to his desk, unsettled. "She did agree to get us Andrea Gutierrez's juvie file."

"Well, that's a step in the right direction." He's got more things to tack up next to her picture. 

"What else did you find out about our lawyer?" John's so happy now that he's on his feet and back to legwork and Finch is back to information duty. Their girl today has worked hard up from nothing to get her law degree. 

"She's a scrapper," John says. "Ambitious. Just trying to make a better life for herself."

"Yes, but a better life can be expensive. She owes $50,000 in student loans... and another 20 on her credit cards."

"That's a lot of debt." But very common for these days coming out of an advanced degree. Or much of any degree really. "Maybe she borrowed money from the wrong person."

"It's possible. She owes money on her business too."

We see her starting her day, being stalked by John. Andrea gets her coffee, she bumps into a guy, she drops her keys on the stairs. She seems harried but hard working. John notices there's a particular purple keychain.

"Apparently she's trying to cave out a niche for herself by suing the state on behalf of inmates and ex-cons with grievances from their stay behind bars."

"How's that working out for her?" 

Finch tosses his head a bit. "She's 0 for 6. I imagine her current case will be lucky number 7."

We see her on a bench at the courthouse, marking her shoes up with a sharpie to keep them black. Scrapper indeed.

Lucky number seven is not going well, as predicted. Mr. Prosecutor has total contempt for her. "This case is baseless, just like every other ex-con nuisance case Ms. Gutierrez has brought before this court." 

Her client looks sad. This is going downhill fast. She doesn't do any favors for herself when she gets upset. "I'm sorry, your honor. I just have a hard time taking the state seriously when it's wearing that tie." People laugh, including John, but that is not at all good. It's as contemptuous as contempt of court gets. She's lucky the judge is annoyed with the both of them and says to reconvene on Friday.

Outside, Andrea promises to come see her client tomorrow and bring Jacob, his son. She tells him not to talk to his parole officer in the hallway, but he does it anyway, so upset that this guy would testify against him when he tested him and knew he was clean. 

"I just did my job, Terrence. Those drugs were in your place. That makes them yours. Shoulda been more careful." Our justice system is a trap. Terrence does not take this well, fury lighting up his eyes. The bailiff leads him away.

John shows up at the Department of Family Services where he knows she'll be and force pairs Andrea's phone. Andrea herself shows up with a sad looking sandwich and fries as an attempted bribe for the clerk. But it is his favorite.

"Pastrami from Zabar's? You must need something big."

"Terrence King's blood test." 

"Did you put in a request?"

"Weeks ago, but..."

Clerk's not happy, but pastrami. He sighs. "I'll look into it, Andi." He gets a grin to go with the sandwich. He looks past her, whispers. "You better go, boss lady's coming."

Boss lady is a hard ass. "Thought you were working through lunch, Chris. Not entertaining visitors." 

Andrea again doesn't do herself any favors with the woman, but at least she leaves before she digs the hole too deep. 

John ends up following her all day. That night, he's outside a pub watching her when Finch chimes in over the com. "Did Ms. Gutierrez go home?"

"She stopped for drinks with some friends."

Meanwhile, Carter's fishing out her new flip phone. She's looking sketchy while she does it, and Fusco notices but he's busy trying to look cool himself.

John's com chirps with her ring. He smiles and answers. "I was worried you'd changed your mind."

"Ha, not yet." She's half in shadow, lit in the lines of security reinforced glass. She's giving her first report for the team. That's kind of a big deal. Finch is listening too, interested to move the case forward but also to see if they're really going to be able to trust Carter after all that's happened. 

She got Andrea's juvie record. It's pretty rough, larceny and such.

John's com beeps. Everyone wants to talk to him tonight. "Hold on, Carter. What is it, Lionel?"

"Carter's up to something. You need to watch your ass."

"I appreciate your concern about my ass, Lionel, but I can handle Detective Carter." Like he handled her when she led him to his near death experience?

Fusco leans in. "I'm telling you, she's talking to someone and keeping it on the down low, working something on her own."

Finch is working something on his own too. He's recording each of these calls separately, tracking everything, listening to everything, realizing how dicey this whole situation is getting and how quickly. This is spiraling and they only just got started.

"I'll keep that in mind." John hangs up the far more boring conversation to go back to his new, more exciting prospect. "You still with me, Carter?"

"Uh, yeah, yeah, I'm... I'm still with you." The statement is layered for both of them. "So, what do we do now?"

"We'll watch and wait. And Carter?" He looks into the distance, seeing her face, her eyes in his mind.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks." 

She hangs up without answering, not sure how she'd answer yet anyway. He's not exactly welcome. Not yet.

As soon as they're alone on the line, Finch pipes in. "Mr. Reese, I'm not _sure_ that keeping both of our detectives in the dark is the best course of action." And by that he means that this is an insanely stupid and dangerous and unnecessary plan and he thinks they should stop something so ridiculous now before things blow up in their faces. "This could get _really_ complicated."

"They're assets. The less they know about each other, the safer they'll be."

"Right now, I'm more concerned with Ms. Gutierrez." Finch always keeps his eyes on the ball. If there's a life in danger that is their responsibility, he will do all he can to protect it, no matter what.

And he's right to be worried, because as soon as Andrea walks out of that pub, John notices something.

"Finch, someone's tailing our girl."

"Someone other than you?" No, he just called to report on himself. 

Our girl's jamming on her headphones so she doesn't notice the guy creeping up behind. But the Machine does and she's worried, marking the guy in red and black. The man pulls out a gun to do what he came to do, but he gets plowed from the side instantly by John flying in from nowhere.

They fight in an alley. The would-be killer gets knocked into a chain link fence and while he's bent over, John hits the gun out of his hand and kicks him straight in the gut. Guy comes back up with a broken bottle that ends up shattered against John's arm as he shields his face. They grapple a bit, but the guy ends up getting John against a dumpster and he punches him several times in the stomach. Normally, that would be nothing, but John is still healing from having been mostly deceased, so that knocks him all the way to the ground. The guy runs away scot free, a rarity for someone who dares to fight John Reese. Or gets chosen by John to fight him, anyway.

"Mr. Reese?" Finch heard the fight, and now he can only hear pained breathing and groans. He stares into the distance, unable to see, unable to stop imagining. "Mr. Reese, are you all right?"

"Yeah," he says, coughing, still barely able to breathe. "Wishing gunshot wounds healed faster right about now." He's doing spectacularly considering what he's been through and how recently. He shouldn't be working at all yet, let alone almost winning a fight after actively tailing someone for an entire day. But the numbers never stop coming and the Man in the Suit ain't got time to bleed.

John is in significant pain, holding his side and crushing his eyes shut. All Finch gets of this is sound, the grunts of agony of a man who normally is absolutely a rock, impervious to any kind of pain. Harold is relieved that John's okay, but he's also very much unsettled that John is not okay at all. He's back in the field too early. He needs to be resting and healing longer. There's some guilt there too, in a variety of senses. If Harold was better at the field work, he could be out there taking care of it, or at least helping, but they struggled mightily with that in a much more controlled environment already. And this is what Harold does, he sends John out to be beaten and injured and nearly killed day after day after day. At a certain point, all he can do is listen and hope. And then send John right back out to do it all over again.

Well, if Reese can't get up yet, he can at least see what he managed to get off the guy when he dropped his bag. It's a little medical vial of a clear liquid with the label scratched off. 

Gradually, John gets to his feet. The pain and weakness is still straining his voice. "Assailant's into anabolic steroids."

"Where's Ms. Gutierrez?" One of Finch's charges may be alive, but what about the other, more defenseless one? He's scared for her, given her would-be murderer just got away from John.

"She's safe for now," he says as he watches her climb some stairs. "But with the way that guy handled himself, I don't know for how much longer." And he doesn't know if he'll be able to do enough about it in this diminished condition. He sighs.

Later in the library, John walks in and sheds the coat over his jacket. His hand is bandaged again. Most of the time he's healing something or another. Now he's just added to the collection. 

He wanders around, looking for Finch, finding nothing. Time for some spying. He unbuttons his jacket and sits to type. And he's apparently just going to try to hack Finch's password by hand, which... good luck, buddy. Did you not hear him talking about random alphanumerics recently? And that's a bare minimum. Harold's going to go the distance. This is ridiculously over-ambitious.

"Any guesses about who'd want to kill our attorney?" Oops, Finch is here after all. Reese turns to see him almost entirely in shadow past the gate in front of the stacks. Busted. But it's not like Finch is too worried about this attempted intrusion. The best hackers in the world can't break his code. John Reese certainly doesn't have a shadow of a chance.

"The guy who tried to attack her last night looked like he'd done time." Harold just keeps coming toward him, and John gets more and more nervous caught like a rat in a trap. "Could be, uh... angry former client?" Reese jumps out of the seat and away from it like it was on fire. He stands awkwardly behind with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Finch sits down and glares up at him for a second. "Excuse me." Harold's best insults are silent.

"Well, we need to get her files. See if the assailant is one of her clients. Narrow down our suspects."

Finch's phone buzzes and he digs it out of his pocket. When he answers, there's an urgency in his voice. "Yes. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Reese looks over at him as Harold grabs his coat to leave. "Half day, Finch?"

He looks anxious, almost like he wants to say something, but he doesn't, of course. "Stay close to Ms. Gutierrez. I'll be back soon." John watches him go. Something's up.

Finch ends up on a street corner. Cops are everywhere outside. Sign says it's the 15th precinct. A young man in a leather jacket and jeans is coming out, folding up a piece of paper. Finch watches him walk down, pent emotion behind his eyes.

The young man smiles when he sees him and Harold smiles back, a genuine smile, an almost unseen rarity these days. But there's a reason. There was someone he smiled for before, and he sees him now in this man's eyes.

"You cut your hair... finally," he says, teasing.

"Got new glasses. Finally." They hug. We almost never see Finch touch anyone else. It's almost startling.

"I suppose you could use some rest before I lecture you on the perils of underground gambling."

"That'd be great. I've been up almost 48 hours." He looks it too, scruffy and unshaven. "My cellmate snored like a freight train." They turn to walk away together.

"Happy you're home, Will."

"Sorry you had to bail me out again." _Again._ Finch watches out for this kid and has for a long time.

But it doesn't seem to bother him. "Well, it's good to have you back either way."

At Carter's police station, she's getting used to weird stuff happening, but that doesn't make any of it any less weird. There's some unknown envelope on her keyboard. What trip to fresh madness is this?

Inside is the little bottle John got off the guy he fought last night. The second she opens it, he calls.

She doesn't say hello. "How'd you get into my office without anyone noticing?"

"Trade secret," he says. He's walking down a street somewhere, under more of that scaffolding that's everywhere in New York. Across the street is a CVS. "I need you to help me find out where to buy that brand of steroid."

"What, you looking to beef up?"

"It belonged to a guy I had a run-in with last night." He rubs at his bandaged hand. "Skilled fighter." He had to be skilled to even hold his own against Reese. "Looking to track down the gym where he juices up."

Carter feels eyes on her and she turns around. It's Fusco, doing a terrible job as ever of being sneaky. 

John notices the long silence. "Are you having second thoughts?" He keeps asking. _Are you still with me?_

"There's just a lot of prying eyes around this place."

"You're getting paranoid, Carter. That's a step in the right direction." In this world, if you feel eyes on you, you are damn right.

And John goes to meet Andrea. He's in her office, and she's across at her busy, messy desk. There are open books, notes, and cups around. She's scattered, but she's trying.

"So, you want to sue your boss. Wonderful, uh... we can absolutely do that." She digs under her pile for a pad and pen. "Um, what, uh... what type of work do you do?"

Hmmmm. "Um, it's um, complicated." Yes, it is definitely complicated.

"Okay... How did you hear about me?" A sentient computer told my friend you were in danger and then he told me to keep an eye out for you.

"A bailiff said ex-cons with gripes against the state if your specialty." Andrea hesitates to agree. "Is that bad information?"

"Um, no, not at all. It's just I thought you were a clear-cut civil case." She's disappointed. Unlucky number 8. "The unicorn I've been looking for. Like the perfect man." Oh, geez.

Yeah, John needs to move this thing along. He fumbles very deliberately with his coffee cup, spilling it across her desk. "Sorry, I'm all thumbs today."

She's flustered, but scurries away to grab some towels. The instant she's gone he grabs her keys out of her purse and replaces her keychain with an identical replacement. 

Finch comes in over the line. "Nicely done, Mr. Reese. I have a signal now."

"How was your appointment?" Maybe this isn't the best time for this conversation, John.

"Quite productive, thank you." On Finch's screen is a mugshot with fingerprints underneath. The other window is a nested table, folders or text files.

And Andrea's back. She gets the coffee and then it's back to business. "So, tell me, why do you want to sue your boss?"

John's got his bandaged hand up so he can tap his finger to his lip and more importantly, she can see it. "Well, my working conditions are, um..." He looks down, holds up his injury. "Unsafe." That's nothing, John. Why don't you show her what's under the shirt? "I slipped and hurt my back."

The mugshot turns out to be John's picture and boy is it terrible. But it's perfect for Finch making a new cover identity for him. This one is John Friel. Harold has at least three monitors we can see: the one with John's new persona, the one always recording and cataloging all the audio that comes in, and behind, a shell window with commands and text we can't read.

"Did that happen on the job?"

"Just last night, actually."

"Mr. Reese, I've got sound in both microphones now. Connecting to her hard drive. I sent an email with a virus promising 40% off any purchase at Bloomingdale's. She couldn't resist downloading it." Good thing everyone is so gullible. It does make life easier for them.

"So, what's this boss of yours like?"

"Very... manipulative. Secretive." He squints his eyes ominously. Finch is listening to all of this, of course, in stereo with two microphones. "We've had some personality conflicts." Oh, come on, you get on like a house on fire, just in your own extremely repressed way. Finch seems a bit perplexed by that one too.

"I take it... he has a lot of money." Oh, girl, you have no idea.

"He's, uh, one of those rich loner types. The kind you'd call strange if he didn't have so much cash." That catches Finch's attention. Where exactly is this going? "So, instead, he's, uh, eccentric." Harold's not insulted, he thinks this is hilarious. He laughs a little to himself. Eccentric is a pretty cool thing to be, honestly.

"Well, this case is going to rack up a lot of hours."

"I can pay up front." Or that eccentric guy can, anyway.

"Then I can start immediately." Or at least soon, she's already running late for another appointment. "I'll call you."

"I look forward to it."

Andrea brought the guy's son, as promised to the visitation. She and the convict both promise the kid his dad will be home soon. That's a big promise to make. They talk about his case. It's looking rough and he can't pay her, but he's very grateful for her help.

"Everyone deserves a second chance," she says. Reese is listening, and that's an instant dart to his heart. He loves anyone who offers the lost second chances. But his phone chirps, so it's off to line two.

"You've found something."

It's Carter, and indeed she has. The vial was Anadrol, "a popular compound found in some MMA gyms." That explains the fighter. "Turned up in buy-and-busts at three gyms in the boroughs."

He asks for the locations, but Carter's nervous about where this is going to end up.

"I'll tell you only if I don't wind up getting called to a crime scene, understood?" John understands, but Carter needs to understand he is a vigilante. He's going to end up breaking the law at some point. It's as inevitable as the rain.

His eyes shine. "You have my word, Detective."

"Any sign of our assailant?" It's later in the day and Reese is out looking while Finch stays at HQ.

"Third location, and still nothing." John's outside an LA Boxing outfit.

"Could be our friend from last night..." Finch says as he shimmies out of his overcoat with some difficulty. Where we watched Reese do this same thing smoothly earlier, it takes Finch more to get it done and he has to readjust his jacket when he's done. "...decided to take the day off." And maybe our friend is beaten to hell too. He did have a tangle with John, after all.

But no, here he is, right on time. "Finch, I see him." John jaywalks across the street to meet the guy with two other burly dudes. Oh, John, this is not a good plan.

"Hey," he says, walking in front of the guys. "You remember me?" Wow, this is a profoundly bad idea.

"Yeah..." And then they go at it again in a more formal style fistfight outside while a sparring match goes on inside. You're still shot, John, did you lose track of that fact? But he hasn't, he simply doesn't care.

It's always great to watch someone try to fight John, because it's such a losing proposition. He leans away from a punch. He ducks under a swinging kick. And then he uses the off balance opening the guy's given him to plaster him right in the face. He goes down, gets back up only to be punched to the ground again, and then he decides to cut his losses and run. The other MMA dudes around have just watched this whole thing go down as an audience. John takes off after him.

They run along the sidewalk until the guy veers into the street. He's running from John across traffic, so John sees what's coming before he does. 

"Look out!" he yells uselessly, way too late.

...And the guy gets plowed by a giant speeding trash truck. Oops. Well, it's technically not a crime scene.

"Reese? Are you okay?" As ever, Finch can only listen and imagine. And it sounded bad. A serious fight, a run, the sound of a truck honking and slamming its brakes, then the sound of something soft getting hit by something very hard. His eyes are always so wide, seeing these things in his mind.

"Yes, but I can't say the same thing about the other guy." 

Everything about this plan was bad. What if the other guys jumped in the fight, three or four or five against one? What if he just hit John right in the bullet hole again and he dropped to his knees unable to breathe or defend himself? Just stupid all the way around. What did he think he was going to get here? 

"So much for not dropping any bodies." Yep, Carter is going to be furious. He gave her his word and now his word is trash. Literally, a trash truck. 

We're regrouping back at the library. Finch is finding out about the man John just got killed.

"Our dearly departed hit man, Alonso Garcia, was an ex-con." He's got all the booking reports on his screen. "He served three years at Five Points for second-degree manslaughter. But... Andrea wasn't his representative."

"Then what's their connection?"

"Terrence King." That's the convict guy Andrea's helping. "They share a parole officer named Dominick Galluska."

John saw that guy at the courthouse and he's thinking now would be a good time to check in on him again. "See if this is more than just a coincidence."

At the scene with the trash truck, they're zipping up the body bag, and John is on the phone already, trying to explain in his way.

"I know what you're gonna say..."

"I give you an address, and you _promised_ me no one would get dead, and what happens?" Well, technically he promised you no crime scenes, and this is an accident, so...

"Well, in my defense, Mr. Garcia didn't look both ways before crossing the street." Reese, do you want this woman working with you or not? This is not really the time for jokes. But I suppose she'd better just get used to the fact that this is her reality now if she wants to work with them.

He's busy taking pictures with the giant lens of the parole officer, instantly a suspicious looking type.

"How did you know the dead guy's name? We couldn't find any ID on him."

"It was on his driver's license." John is just digging this hole straight into the center of the earth.

Carter can't help but laugh a little at the absurdity of it all. "You stole a dead guy's wallet."

"He tried to kill Andrea Gutierrez last night, and he was gonna try again." He has this puppy dog look in the car. Carter can't see it, but he talks like she's right there. "Garcia had just under, what, 10 grand on him? My guess, it's a payoff for a hit."

Now Carter's easing off, because she knows he's telling the truth. He saved a life last night, and maybe today. "Who'd want to kill her?"

"I'm working on it."

Galuska's meeting with someone who's trying to appeal to him. "I can't pay you this month, Galuska."

"If I don't get my cut, I bet I could find a dozen parole violations, throw you back inside." Well, thanks for the concise self-incrimination, guy. Poor parolee is so upset. He hands over 10%, a fortune for someone making so little.

"When I got you this job, our deal was 30% of your paycheck. Don't you cheap out on me, Lou." 30%? That's impossible to keep up with. Not that this guy cares. There are always more in the chain. This is the dead opposite of giving people second chances. This is taking them and stomping those chances right back into the ground. John is going to have this man in a vice.

In fact, John can't even wait until this conversation is over. "Hey, Dominic!" He just starts walking over to them, fearless as he always is. "Where's _my_ money?"

"Who do you think you're talking to?"

"I thought I was talking to the guy who's shaking down his parolees for their legit pay." And now John's all the way up in this guy's face. 

This old balding crook thinks he can take a swing at Reese. It goes exactly as well as it ever would. John just pushes the guy's arm over mid-swing and then sweeps his foot under his knee to knock him straight to the concrete on his back. You can hear all the wind get knocked out of him at once. He fades out of consciousness.

Parolee Lou is still just standing there, stunned. John rifles Galuska's pockets and pulls out a wad of cash that he holds up to Lou. "See if you can find me a bottle of booze in there, will ya?" They're outside a convenience store that has never been more convenient. For a setup, at least.

John props Galuska up in the front seat of his car, and while he's doing it, he notices the handgun the guy has in his passenger seat. He stuffs it into the man's hand and reaches for the guy's phone too. He tucks the phone up under his shoulder so he can talk while he grabs the cheap gin Lou came back with. 911 picks up just as he's dousing Galuska's pants with the whole bottle.

"I'm Domnic Galuska, and I may be a danger to myself and others." When he hangs up, he shuts the door and simply walks away, job done. Wonder what Lou makes of all this?

We're somewhere new, but another place filled with many books. We see Harold and Will upside down at first, reflected in an indoor swimming pool.

"Wow, the old loft," he says. God, this place is haunted with memories for him. For both of them.

"Yeah... Haven't been here since the funeral." 

But Harold is so happy to have him here, this living piece of lost and loved Nathan. "I thought you might come back to it... someday."

"I'm packing some stuff up to send to storage, if there's anything that you're interested in, let me know." He has the Machine, the only thing left of Nathan he needs or wants. This is all just stuff.

"Thanks. You thinking about staying?" He's so hopeful. You never see Harold this way.

"No, I'm thinking about selling the place. Never really liked it much here." 

Finch wanders off into the darker reaches of the loft. That's both good and painful. "Oh."

"It's where he moved after the divorce. Always seemed too big... expensive... vacant." It does. They look dwarfed in this dark place, full of empty space and reflections.

"Well... he worked a lot." Yes, he did. So did you. "Guess I can see how you might think that." Ouch, that's so painful. Nathan's son is still angry with him, but Harold misses him more than almost anything in the world.

"Sorry, I forgot to ask– how's the insurance business going?" 

_Oh, really great, Will. I'm more into life coverage than you can possibly imagine._ Harold has such a hard vertical line in his brow. This conversation looks physically painful for him. They're in Nathan's old house, surrounded by his things, his memories. His son is there, but all he is still angry at his father for leaving his mother. And Harold has to stand there and be meek and pretend he is someone he is not. Not anymore. That person died with Nathan.

"Boring as ever, thank you." And now we see that Reese is outside, listening in to this whole conversation and taking pictures with the big photo lens. "Have you had a chance to go through everything?"

"Turns out Dad was a bit of a pack rat. It looks like _half_ of it's mine. Projects, awards, papers from school." 

Harold is circling him, watching him dig through all their lost lives. But this was some of the best parts of Nathan, how much he loved people, loved Harold, loved his son. Harold smiles, proud himself. He watched Will grow up too. He was right there the whole time. "Well, you always were an outstanding student. Have you thought about finishing your residency?"

John's still taking pictures, looking through a window at them looking through a window of time.

"No, got plenty of action around the world with MSF, Red Cross." John outside is already in love with this kid. "Didn't feel like I was helping people."

"You're a doctor. All you _do_ is help people."

"I treat symptoms, and the disease after the fact, never the underlying cause. I want to _really_ help people." 

And Finch has found a picture of Nathan, his always perfect hair, his witty eyes that hid his brilliance. And all the while, Will is talking about how just like them, he can't stand to help people only when it's too late. He wants to be there in time, just like John, just like Carter, just like Harold. And just like Nathan. 

"I was just thinking how much you sound like your father." Oh, it's agony.

"Yeah," Will says, wistful too.

"Any chance I can convince you to stay?" He loves you so much, Will.

"Sorry."

"Well, don't leave without saying goodbye." It's interesting the slightly singsong light voice he uses for this. The weight of all he carries is not something Will can know about ever.

"I won't." 

Reese takes shots of Will hugging Harold again as they prepare to leave. He gets a call. It's Carter, and she's not happy again for a whole new insane thing she's found that he's done.

"You framed Galuska for making a death threat against one of his parolees?"

"You said you needed evidence."

"Not like that!"

"If you don't want to interrogate him, Carter, I'd be happy to do it for you." More than happy.

"He's already in the box."

"Good. We need to find out if he's working with anyone. See if he's sent anyone else after Andrea."

"I know how to do my job, thank you." Seriously, don't mansplain investigation to Carter, John. "But I did find something interesting about Galuska. Several of his parolees that got sent back inside complained about him setting them up. Said Galuska planted evidence on them."

"What does he get out of it?'

"I'm gonna find that out. In the meantime, can you try not to break any more laws?" He can try. That's about it. Maybe he'll make it a whole hour.

Fusco's still watching her from a distance, suspicious of her and looking so suspicious himself. How did he ever get to be a detective? He calls in and Reese answers.

"Hello, Lionel. Miss me?"

"Yeah, like I miss a hangover." 

"I've got a job for you."

"This about Carter?"

"No, it's not Carter I'm concerned about right now. It's someone else." He's still looking up in the window. Whatever this is, it's dangerous if Harold's past has come to visit him. Either the man is dead or he's not, you don't get to have it both ways.

"All right, what's this job?" Lionel makes a fuss, but he enjoys the thrill of the surreptitious vigilante stuff.

Andrea's having lunch at her desk and making her dating profile on match-heart.com. Good luck to her. In walks John with coffee again. She's surprised to see him, and greets him with her mouth full. "John! Do we have an appointment?"

"No, but I have a question. I was just assigned a new PO. He's being difficult." So I knocked him the hell out, doused him in cheap gin, put a gun in his hand, and called 911 with a suicide threat. "Name's Dominic. Galuska."

"I know that guy. Total jackass."

"He keeps searching my apartment... and there's nothing to find, but he keeps coming back."

"If he shows up again, call me," she offers. "I'll be there, any time of the day or night." John lifts his eyebrows at the eagerness. "On the clock, of course."

He gestures at her laptop screen. "How's that site working out for you?"

She hides the window away instantly, tries to think of what she's going to say next. "Uh... It's hard to find the right kind of guy in my line of work." 

"Huh, that seems odd, because you're very attractive, smart..."

She puts her hands up a little. "Let me stop you there, John." What if she hadn't stopped him? Would he have kept trying to pick her up? "I don't date my clients or ex-cons. Been there, done that. This is Andrea 2.0 you're looking at. Plus, I need your money. And I like my guys not quite so..." She shrugs. "Better looking than me." She's not wrong.

He smiles and walks away like he's going to leave, but no, he's just looking at her diplomas on the wall. "Why did you stay in the town where you grew up? I mean, why not start fresh?"

"Because I'm not running away from who I was. I was taught it's okay to make mistakes, and I believe everyone deserves a second chance." Andrea is singing John's song. He looks at her in admiration. He'd take a bullet for this woman, no question. Of course, John is the self-sacrificing sort, he'd probably willingly take a bullet for 75% of Manhattan.

Carter's got Galuska in the room to talk. "Threatening a parolee's life, Dominic?"

"This is some kind of misunderstanding." No, it's some kind of frame job.

"Just a little depressed, huh? You got a tough job." She flips through a folder for a second. "From what I'm seeing here, you're not very good at it. You got the worst recidivism rate in your office." No wonder if he's shaking them down and then tossing them back. "Kicked more guys back inside last month than I did." She looks up, sucks in her lip a little. She's got him on the line. "Some were even saying they were set up."

"You know a criminal's motto, Detective. "I didn't do it.""

She folds her arms. "You're doing a public service, Mr. Galuska. Hard work, crap pay. Which is why it's interesting you drive such a nice truck." 

"My aunt passed away a couple of months ago, left me some money. Why do you care?"

"I care when people get hurt." Yes, that's Carter in a nutshell. That's what it's all about. "Like your parolee, Alonso Garcia." Galuska doesn't bite. She raises her voice. "Guy got run over in Red Hook this afternoon."

"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy."

"Did you know Mr. Garcia tried to kill Andrea Gutierrez two nights ago?" Even Andrea herself doesn't know about that.

"Like I said, couldn't happen to a nicer guy."

"I can't for the _life_ of me figure out what kind of grudge Alonso Garcia would have against Ms. Gutierrez, can you?"

"I think I'm ready for my lawyer now." He should have asked for his lawyer before the professional military interrogator came anywhere near him.

John's phone chirps as he's coming out of a door into the rain. "How'd it go?"

"I'm sorry, got a big goose egg on this one. Galuska walked."

"Oh, no, you did great, Carter. Because while you two were having a chat, I got into his apartment. Borrowed his computer." 

John is just casually walking down the street with a computer under his arm, getting absolutely soaked with no umbrella. He may not care about the rain, but the electronics might not be so forgiving. Finch might not be so forgiving either if he has to try to salvage the drives out of a fried system.

Carter is, of course, understandably pissed. At every turn, John's been a troublemaker and lawbreaker on this case, and as smug as humanly possible about it the entire time. She just called and apologized to the man, and this is what she gets for it. She tosses her folder on her desk. "You broke into his apartment?"

"You said _you_ couldn't do anything illegal. You didn't say anything about me." _That was implied, asshole._ She just hangs up on him, snapping the phone shut.

Finch is typing, lit from the front in that blue-white digital screen light. The way his glasses always reflect fragments of the color and light of his screens is beautiful. You can see him absorbing and processing all that he sees. Looks like John managed not to short out the stolen computer, but it's not for a lack of trying.

"Mr. Galuska should know better than to protect his important files with his _birth date_." Finch is almost disgusted by the stupidity of such bad security. This is as basic as it gets. 

John catches a view of what he's looking at and leans in beside him. "That's a hell of a lot of money in the bank for a man for a man that makes 50 grand a year." They're looking at an account with just over a half million in it. That's quite a shakedown racket he's running.

"Each deposit coincides with when he sent one of his parolees back to prison. He's getting kickbacks from somewhere or someone."

"Prisons are big business. The more inmates, the more funding." These early seasons of the show are entirely about our modern dystopia, and how far good people have to go to feel like they're helping at all in this bottomless financialized quagmire.

Finch sees something else. "Mr. Galuska took out exactly $9,900 from his savings account three days ago. Anything over ten gets flagged by the IRS." Classic structuring. 

"He paid Alonso Garcia to kill Andrea." John's got his scary eyes and voice going, thinking of such a sweet, good-hearted person just being snuffed out by two lowlifes out for some quick cash.

But there's more. "That's not the only withdrawal. There's another one in the same amount, just last night. That means–" 

"He hired someone else to finish the job." John is already halfway to the door. Finch looks up at him. It's all in his hands now.

Andrea's taking notes in a law library somewhere. It's late and she's utterly alone in a world of polished wood and old paper. She thinks she hears something behind her, but can't find it. When she turns back around, what she heard reemerges: a man with a pistol, ready to fire. 

And once again, John just rushes in from out of nowhere like a sudden tornado. He knocks the guy's gun out of his hand and grapples him. Andrea jumps out of her seat gasping. She sees who it is. "John!"

John's a little busy. He pushes the man back through the stacks, punching at his face downward. The heavy thud of flesh and bone smacking reverberates. He's clearly winning the fistfight, so the killer decides to flick out a knife. Andrea freezes, terrified, and John gets his hands up defensively, bouncing on the balls of his feet for quick maneuvering. The man tries a couple of slashes John just backs away from, then when his opponent is flailing, it's always John's point to move. Another hard punch gives space to grab his own weapon, a heavy law book, which he absolutely clobbers the man with in an uppercut motion. That guy will be lucky to have his jaw still attached when he finally regains consciousness. Whenever that's going to be.

Andrea is stunned behind him as John admires his impromptu weapon. He's just starting to sweat. This was fairly routine, honestly. Her breath comes hard and fast behind, and he's catching his, although he's only lost a little. If he wasn't still recovering, he'd probably be back at 100% already. He tosses the book in his hand to check the spine. Principles of Criminal Law. Good book. Hefty.

"John, what is going on?"

"I don't need your services anymore, Andrea," he says as he turns around to face her. "But I think you're gonna need mine." 

Finch is checking in. "Mr. Reese, are you at the safe house yet?"

"Heading there now."

He takes her by the hand to pull her into the room. Taking a very personal type of protection for this one. 

"Okay, what the hell?" Did she not ask until they got all the way here?

"You're in danger, Andrea."

"Um, you think?" Heh, yeah, thanks for that astute analysis, John. "Who was the guy with the gun, and who are you, because your back seemed just fine when you went ninja on that guy." His back is fine. It's his multiple healing gunshot wounds that are the problem.

"I'm like you," he says. "I give people second chances."

"So you were never in jail?"

"Not in this country." LOL. John's all quips tonight. His phone chirps. "Excuse me."

"Mr. Reese? An arrest report just came in for the... gentleman you _apprehended_ in the law library." We pan back, screens upon screens. "His name is Wendell Lentz, and I've confirmed that he's one of Dominic Galuska's parolees." Uh, doesn't this look ridiculously bad for Galuska? What exactly is his plan here?

"Okay, we need to make sure Galuska doesn't have any more killers out there looking for Andrea."

She's very upset listening to John's side of this conversation. "What did I do?"

"Galuska's getting money from someone to set up his ex-cons and send them back to prison. You kicked a hornet's nest with Terrence's case. Galuska may have planted those drugs in his home." But didn't she say in court they were covered in dust?

"Oh, my god. That means Terrence is actually innocent." 

John catches that. "You weren't sure?"

"I wanted to be. Terrence was given a drug test the night he was arrested, and it came back negative. Galuska and the Department of Corrections conveniently misplaced it. I never got a copy of the report."

"A little more digging, you'd also have found all the complaints filed against him. Parolees who said Galuska set them up."

Andrea moves to leave. "I need to tell Terrence."

John takes her arm, holds her fast. "You need to stay here until I find out who else he may have hired to kill you, and who Galuska's working for." He digs through her purse, pulls something out as he leaves instructions. "Stay here, lock the doors, and don't open them for anyone." He flicks the little black bar in his hand and it extends out into a small nightstick. "I take it you know how to use this?"

"You grow up where I did, you know how to handle yourself." He nods and leaves her to it.

At the Lyric diner, Carter's having coffee at the counter, flipping through papers as John walks in. 

"Hmm," he says as he slides into the stool next to her. "You're getting better at ditching your tail." She rolls her eyes at him. "Maybe you got a knack for breaking the law." He thinks that's charming. 

She absolutely does not. Carter has actual police work and investigation to show him. "I've been going back through Galuska's files and found a pattern." She pushes the papers over and Reese skims. "In the past year, all the parolees he's busted were single parents."

"Which means their kids end up in foster care." Any cruelty at all with children hurts John. His eyelashes are so beautifully long in profile. 

She tilts her head. _That's right, so follow the logic._ "Galuska wasn't getting paid for the parolees, he was getting paid for their _kids_." He's astonished by how diabolical and soulless this is.

"Each child is worth about 800 bucks a month. Galuska's _gotta_ be working with someone at DFS."

"Well, DFS is a big agency..."

"I'm going to have a talk with Mary and Paul Kinsey, the foster parents looking after Terrence King's kid."

He looks over in admiration. "You're good at this, Carter." 

She drops her folder shut. "It's my job. _And,_ " she says flicking a finger at him as she picks up her coffee cup, "I didn't have to shoot anyone to do it!" 

Now it's her chance to look smug. John says nothing. In his mind, he's thinking, _well, actually I haven't shot anybody on this case yet, and the only dead person was an accident, so..._

Carter's in with the Kinseys. 

"I see here you have six foster children under your care. Is that still correct?" 

They confirm it's true.

"Do you, either of you, know a man named Dominic Galuska?" 

Wife should never play poker as she shifts her eyes around. 

"No, who's that?" Husband asks. He's a much better liar.

"What about Gloria Copeland? She's the head of foster placement at DFS." They look at each other. This is going very badly very quickly. "Where do all six of the children that are under your care sleep? Because it looks to me..." And Carter digs out a floor plan of their house she had ready. "You live in a one-bedroom apartment. Not much space for six kids and two adults."

They're so obviously guilty they can barely stand it, but they say nothing.

"Okay, you tell me the truth now, or I arrest both of you for interfering with a criminal investigation." 

Husband is the one that cracks. "Jacob is the only child living with us right now."

Carter just stares at him. "So... the others on the list, Rebecca Johnson, Trey White..."

"Rebecca ran away months ago. Trey White and the other children, they..." He finally looks back up. "The others don't exist."

"But I bet you're still getting _paid_ for all of them."

Wife decides they're in deep enough already. "Enough, Paul. You shut your mouth." The time for that was before this interview started.

Carter's smartphone rings. Caller ID says Incoming Call Unknown. She crushes her lips together and mutes it. She's busy.

"Galuska's not smart enough to pull enough to pull this off on his own, so he had to have a contact at DFS, and _you_ are going to tell me who that person is."

"We want a lawyer," says wife, pulling herself as far back in her chair as she can get. "And our phone call."

Speaking of phones, Carter's is ringing again. This time under Incoming Call, it says _Answer The Phone, Detective_. Hi, Finch. Does she even know his name yet? She decides she'd better figure out whatever this is, and the Kinseys have lawyered up anyway.

"Who is this?" She's not pleased. She was working.

"You know who, Detective." Actually, she doesn't. No one does. In the library, Harold is soldering something as he speaks to her, never looking up from his intricate work. "I want you to give the Kinseys their phone call.

"You are interrupting me in the middle of an interrogation."

Smoke rises from the soldering iron, sealing a wire connection into some kind of plastic housing. "Sounded like the _end_ of an interrogation to me. They asked for their lawyer."

Now that spooks Carter for real. "How would _you_ know that? Are you bugging my phone?"

His voice is flat. "I want you to give the Kinseys their phone call."

"Not until I find out who their contact at DFS is."

"We think we already know who that person is, Detective. We've checked the DFS filings for the last six parolees that Galuska busted." We get to see Finch's setup, a large roll of wire solder, an open kit of many attachments and pieces for his top of the line soldering iron. Boards with half attached transistors sit in front of him. "The signatures on all six belong to one woman: Gloria Copeland."

"Yeah, but that's not enough evidence to arrest her. DFS is a _mountain_ of paperwork. It'd take months to sort through it all, and if the Kinseys tip her off, Copeland's only gonna destroy the evidence."

"That's exactly what we want her to do." He watches a test paper roll through the device he's made on his desk. It's a scanner. "If we're going to work together, Detective, a little bit of trust is in order." Neither of them are making this an easy transition for Carter. When Harold said he was throwing her in the deep end, he meant it.

And the next time we see him, he's back in his meek round glasses, the nerdiest clothes he has, a jacket, and some ID badge. Like John in his suit, Finch's IT guy clothes buy him passage most everywhere. He passes by Gloria Copeland on his way into a room of compression stacks holding many many cardboard document boxes. He has a box of his own with him, a silver case.

"Finch, are you in?" Of course, he is. He snaps open the case, and empties the shredder beside him.

"Just."

Reese is on the street, the 200 block of East 22nd Street, given the awning's print. "Well, you need to move fast."

"Thanks for that newsflash, Mr. Reese. Here I was planning to move at a sloth-like pace and get myself captured." LOL. He removes his new little scanner device from the case and kneels to install it into the shredder. And snap snap, it's done in seconds. He closes the shredder up and runs a test paper through. Sure enough, there's the document, preserved for posterity on his phone. "The scanner's installed, Mr. Reese. Was that fast enough for you?"

John smirks and chuckles. 

The Machine is listening as Terrence collect calls Andrea at the safe house. He's panicked. They're moving him to Attica tomorrow for no reason that can be good. She promises to take care of it, but mentions they're going to need help convincing a judge to get an injunction.

Reese is still wandering the streets of New York. Apparently he's just been walking for the past six hours, because it's dark now.

"We were right," Finch says in his ear. "The Kinseys must have contacted Gloria Copeland. She's begun shredding the documents. I'm getting the scans now." Finch's gadget is working great. His screen is filling up with page after page of document images. "Everytime Dominic Galuska sends one of his parolees back to prison, Ms. Copeland uses the foster care paperwork to hide the kids she's fabricated. She makes it look like the parolees have more kids than they actually do." Interestingly, Finch must have been in a hurry when he came back, because he's still wearing his old round glasses in the library. "This scam must be worth... upwards of a quarter of a million dollars a month."

"We got a problem then, Finch." We see what John's upset about. Gloria's buying flowers. He's been following her. "Gloria Copeland left work early. She isn't the one shredding the documents. Galuska's got a different contact at DFS." Uh, oh. Law of economy of characters, could it be...?

Sure enough, the clerk with a taste for pastrami is discovering Andrea in the darkened DFS offices ecause she was stupid enough to come out of hiding to meet him. He clearly wasn't expecting her.

"Andrea... What... What are you doing here?"

"Terrence is being transferred to Attica in the morning."

"Um, what do you want me to do about it?" He shuts the door behind him. Not good.

"Call his case worker, Chris. Tell her to contact the judge that made the order. The transfer is not in the best interest of the child."

He turns to her. Blinks a few times, realizing what he's going to have to do. "I can't do that."

"What's wrong with you? Why not?"

"Because I'm the one that asked the judge to move him."

"You're working with Galuska." And she just walked right into his lair. John left her somewhere safe, and now she's trapped in an empty office with a man who is almost certainly going to kill her now to keep his scam quiet. 

He brings up a pistol from the drawer, although he goes for the grandiose chat instead of the trigger. 

"You know the shame of it, Andi? Turns out you're actually a pretty good lawyer. Not that anyone's ever going to know it." 

Harold is still working in the library.

"Mr. Reese, I'm running a handwriting analysis on the signatures of Gloria Copeland and Chris Scollard." Of course he is. He's got a bespoke program scanning across and marking similarities in green and red lines. Letters blink on the screen. "The Rs in both names are identical." 

"He forged her signature. Gloria Copeland had no idea what was going on." Again, astute analysis, John.

Meanwhile, the Machine is keeping one of her ten thousand eyes on Andrea, who is being pushed by red and black boxed Chris down a set of stairs toward her intended doom. Yet another woman we watch be menaced by a man.

We're back down in the storage stacks again. It's all shadows and cardboard.

"Why would you do this, Chris? How could you betray all of those families?" A quarter million a month seems like her answer.

He shoves her forward. "Those kids were better off with their foster families than they ever were with their convict parents." 

She starts talking about Terrence and his son, how his son helped him turn his life around. Mostly it's a chance for her to quietly reach into her bag for her little extendo nightstick. 

"I admire that bleeding heart of yours," he says.

"I'd rather it bleed than stop beating altogether." She turns around and cracks him in the knee with the stick. He crumples to the floor and she takes off running. He's hobbling after her and she tries to leave things in his path to slow him down, but he gets a few shots off in her direction. John hears them as he approaches from the hallway. That's bad news for pastrami clerk. 

John almost takes a bullet as he comes around the corner unexpectedly and surprises Chris. He shoots out the light above the man. Pastrami clerk creeps toward where Reese was.

John finds Andrea and waves with his bandaged hand for her to move to safety. He'll take care of this. Her clicking shoes get Chris' attention and he gets another shot off after her but that gives John his opening to come in from behind and snag the guy in the shoulder. Chris stumbles and groans, limping desperately toward the door.

"He's getting away!" Andrea cries.

"No, he's not."

He's right. Chris is about to head up the stairs toward the exit, but there's already someone there on her way down. It's Carter, gun out, authority voice on.

"NYPD! Turn around, drop your weapon. Drop it!"

John just walks out from behind with Andrea tucked safely behind him, but he's not 100% sure this is going to work as he'd hoped. Is Carter really in? He leads Andrea to the stairs silently but turns just as he reaches the first. He looks back at Carter, and she nods. Their partnership officially begins here as he leaves with his number and she handcuffs the threat.

At the courthouse, Terrence is now getting free and hugging his son rather than going to Attica. John walks in in all black to speak to Andrea. Lucky number 7 really was lucky. She came up with wins on wrongful imprisonment, defamation of character, violation of civil rights, and malicious prosecution. It's a huge win and her career is now set. 

"And you get 30% of $10 million. Not bad. Maybe you can stop sneaking into NYU's library."

"I think I'm going to start with a new pair of shoes. Besides, I like it in there. Has a good vibe."

John raises his eyebrows. "Even after you almost got killed?"

"Well, I had you and your complicated job to save me." He smiles, looks away a little. "You ever think of having a less hazardous profession like mountain climbing or bear wrestling? I mean, is it really worth risking your life for people you don't know?" 

For John, risking his life for people he doesn't know is the only thing that makes his life worth living. This work keeps his soul above water. Without it, he would hopelessly sink and drown in the bottom of a river or the bottom of a bottle.

"You're not the only one who believes in second chances." He's so grateful for having been given a second chance of his own. There is nothing that pleases him more than passing that love and generosity along.

"Thank you." She gives him a hug. This is good for John, real human contact. He and Finch get so little of it, but both of them have been hugged in this episode. They need it so much.

At Nathan's old loft, Will is finishing boxing things up as Finch comes up the stairs. "Hey, Uncle Harold." 

It's so agonizing to see this glimpse of the real life that Harold once had and never will again. He was an uncle to his beloved friend's son. He was a real part of these people's lives. Is. Will is the last fragment he has left of this part of his heart. Before his life shattered.

The look on his face of gentle sweetness is heartbreaking. "When you called, I assumed it was going to be goodbye again."

"No," Will says. "I'm not going to sell the place. Not right away, anyway."

"Are you taking up your residency again?" There's such an earnest hope in his constant trying to push this boy he helped raise to follow a good path in his life. 

"No. I'm done patching people up, and I want to find out more about my dad." 

Harold finds another photo, this one of Nathan and Will together. "Look at this, this is the day you got into med school. He was so proud of you. Always was."

"Going through his things, I realize how little I really knew him."

"I think most fathers are a mystery to their sons." He doesn't look away from the photo, this lost moment, this lost piece of his heart.

"Well, most sons don't have the advantage of reading the unauthorized biography. Or..." he waves his hand over the room full of boxes. "All of this. It's from the audit the lawyers did, when he left me his half of the company. Now, most of it, I don't understand. I get lost when it comes to computers, like you, right?

One of the greatest innovators in the history of technology laughs ridiculously. "Right!" 

All of the compartmentalizing of Harold's life is agonizing. None of the relationships in his adult life have been true. No one gets more than a sliver of him, and even that is mostly lies.

"But, there are some things I do understand. Inconsistencies, like... Did you know he shut down IFT for nearly seven years?" Yeah, you know, he just may have heard something about that somewhere.

Harold squints a bit, thinking. "Yes, I knew that he downsized a bit."

"Well, he gave all his employees severance and sent them packing. Why would he do that? And look, whatever it was that he was working on, he sold it to the government for a dollar. So... that means it was either something worthless... or priceless."

Harold looks at him. Will can never be allowed to get too close to this information. It is incredibly, horribly dangerous. He wouldn't wish it on a stranger. He certainly doesn't want it marking this goodhearted man, his dearest friend's son. He just shrugs, still silent.

"Did he ever talk to you about it? I mean, you were his closest friend."

More squinting, as if he's pondering the infinite. "No, he never did." 

Finch looks over at those boxes with deep concern. They are poison, a radioactive bomb sitting in their midst, deadly to anyone who delves too deep inside them.

At the library, John is snooping around again, this time fishing through Facebook on a tablet for pictures and info of Will Ingram. Then he finds a picture of Nathan, the NI of legend. Another click, and he's on an article about Nathan's passing. "Billionaire's Tragic Death" it reads in huge blue letters. Nathan smiles slyly in a photo beneath it. The article talks about how he was an esteemed visionary, the charismatic founder of IFT, and how his employees all loved him and mourned him. IFT's tech is everywhere in the lives of everyone, the article says. 

John's phone chirps, and he picks it up in his com. "Where have you been, Finch?"

"I won't be back in the office today. Maybe you should take the rest of the day off as well." He's walking down the street.

"You want to talk about it?" Reese can hear the strain in Finch's voice, but this is a futile effort, of course.

"Not particularly."

"But you admit there is something going on, something that you're worried about. That makes me worried."

"Well, you needn't, Mr. Reese. I hope you understand that there are certain things that I can't... tell you."

"Oh, I understand completely, Finch." John is extremely creepy here. They hang up and he gets another call immediately. "How's it going, Lionel?"

"I'm on that new assignment you gave me. I gotta say, I should at least be getting cab fare for this. This job ending anytime soon?"

"As soon as I get some answers." And of course, we see what Fusco's job is. He's tailing Finch down the street. Good luck with that. John's decided to go the brute force stalker way to find out about Harold. He's not going to get what he wants.

* * *

#### Thoughts

  * Let's talk about Will. He's... a problem.
    * Will's history
      * Harold and Nathan were friends from college and stayed close enough through Will's birth and growth that Will knows him as "Uncle Harold"
      * Harold was known in Nathan's household as Harold Wren, a computer illiterate insurance agent
        * Which implies he and Nathan invented a different meeting for themselves than MIT to give Nathan's family and they were able to maintain that facade
      * Meanwhile, Harold's creating all of the technology IFT is built upon and later creates the Machine. 
        * Despite the fact Harold may hold up to three jobs at any given time at the company he co-founded (All his actual technical work, the database job he starts in the 90s and keeps for 17 years, and the occasional pretense as Nathan's IT guy), Will clearly never sees Harold at his father's company at any point or else they must have covered for it on the fly successfully
      * You can attribute Will's lack of knowledge to his parents' troubled marriage/divorce and his estrangement from his father but that doesn't make it simple to believe Harold and Nathan were able to keep all these tracks of lies separate for him (and Olivia, presumably?) for decades on end while maintaining these close relationships. They are both master liars, but this requires an exceptionally intelligent and inquisitive young man to never notice anything remotely questionable for the entire length of his life. 
    * Questions about Will
      * Where does Will think Harold and Nathan met if not college? What story did they give him?
      * There's no way Harold could have gone to Nathan's funeral as Wren given the danger and his injuries, so what did he tell Will about why he didn't? Too upset?
      * How did Harold maintain any kind of relationship with Will when it was too dangerous for him to be in Grace's life at all? Will is the son of the only known creator of the Machine and Wren is Nathan's best friend. Wouldn't any connection between them be inherently profoundly dangerous to both of them? Why is Harold willing to risk Will in this way but not Grace? Wouldn't Grace have been a safer relationship to maintain as she never had anything to do with Nathan (and thereby the Machine) and Harold's identity with her was wholly separate?
      * How does Will think Harold got his limp? As a doctor, has he ever asked his uncle about it, ever expressed any concern or interest in helping him?
    * On a meta level, it feels like Will was initially intended as an addition to the team as a doctor. They clearly made him to be a miniature Nathan (and Harold), driven to stop terrible things before they start instead of putting out the fires after. But he creates so many complications to the narrative that make other story points extremely difficult to reconcile. Will is set up to be an ongoing problem for Harold to deal with as he learns about his father, but not far from here, he accepts a quick explanation and simply disappears from the story forever. We never hear of him again. Will's only actual story impact is outing Harold to Alicia Corwin, which ultimately matters little itself.
  * Having said all of that, watching Harold with Will is absolutely heart crushing. Harold is so different with him, sweet and gentle and bright. He smiles, he laughs, he gets and gives hugs. But behind all of that is the man he is today, the broken man behind his eyes, viewing all that's left of one of the only people he ever even came close to trusting in his entire life. Nathan – brilliant, passionate, complicated Nathan. Harold's absolute dedication to his dearest friend is beautiful and heartbreaking. They were perfectly matched, and that unique human connection has been severed forever. All that is left of Nathan now is Will, this haunted loft, these stacks of framed smiling photos. And of course, the last, most important piece of code Nathan ever wrote, the contingency system of the Machine that gives them the numbers and gives them hope.
  * Will is the son Nathan had with his wife, but the Machine is the daughter he had with Harold.



#### Ideas/Prompts

  * AU where Will finds out
    * Maybe John needs medical help and Harold gets desperate
    * Or John brings Harold to him in an emergency instead, knowing from his spying that Will is capable and would definitely help Harold if he was in need
    * Or Will notices Harold is injured in some way after a number, bruised or bleeding, and he gets suspicious




	14. [MISSING] POI 1x13 - Root Cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Episode recap missing

Currently I do not have completed notes for this episode.


	15. POI 1x14 - Wolf and Cub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese temporarily fosters a little boy who's out for blood vengeance while Finch is still trying to balance caring for Nathan's son with keeping him as far the hell away from the truth as possible.

### POI 1x14 - Wolf and Cub

#### Landmarks

  * Carter has an officer-involved shooting
  * Will Ingram leaves Harold's life forever
  * Alicia Corwin now knows Harold exists



#### Injuries

  * **Fusco**
    * Shot in the ass saving a kid



* * *

Harold and John are coming back into the darkened library post their first run-in with Root. Reese is all hardcore clearing mode, gun out, flashlight with it. Harold trails behind him, his hands in his trenchcoat pockets.

"Nobody here," John says as he lowers the gun. He moves aside. Only now will he let Finch out ahead of him. Harold limps forward quickly, worried to see the damage and what's left behind after his mistake. He flicks a breaker and the lights buzz as they come back on.

Now that the place is cleared of people, Harold has to clear it of bugs. He holds a red light out in front of him, scanning desperately around the room with it.

"I've never seen you like this," John says. He's definitely unsettled by Finch's open anxiety. "That hacker must have gotten to you." Just wait, John. 

"Only the paranoid survive. Sage advice." He walks over to his desk to pick up the disconnected pieces. It's still very dark in there. More of the light will come back when more of his electronics come back online. "Well, I'll have to rebuild my system from _scratch._ Reinforce the firewall."

"Anything I can do?"

"Yes," he says, remarkably regular. "New number." He hands it over scribbled on a little piece of paper. "Just came in this morning."

"Even with the library offline..." John's learned something new. Finch doesn't get the numbers at the library. It's just where he works.

Harold stops for a second, realizing his carefully crafted armor of secrets has cracked a bit. But there is something much more important than that. Someone. "His name is Darren McGrady, 14 years old. That's his last known address. You better get started." He fires up a drill. He's got hard drives to destroy.

John's at the boy's address at night, and it's instantly a bad scene. There's no one there, just strips of police tape. This is a crime scene already. He brings his flashlight back out and steps forward.

"Hey, Finch... Any chance your Machine gave us the number a few days late?"

" _No_ , why?" He's working on something small in front of him.

"Because I had to crawl through police tape to get inside Darren's apartment." The flashlight flickers across a poster. Akira Kurosawa's Samurai7, it says. 

"The library may have been compromised, but I can assure you the Machine _was not_. Whatever happened there, Darren's situation must be ongoing."

He scans around, things are scattered. "Looks like a home invasion. So whose blood is on the floor?" He picks a photo off the fridge when he is abruptly interrupted.

"Hey..." The lights flick on. "Who are you?" An older man in a sweater comes forward. 

John's all set for this. "Detective Stills," he says smoothly, holding up the badge. "You the super?"

"That's right. A little late for the party, aren't you?"

"Mind telling me what happened here?"

"What it looks like. One of my tenants got shot. About a week ago. Older kid, Travis McGrady." There's a picture of Travis and a younger boy smiling together on the fridge. "Damn shame. Real good about paying rent on time." Thanks for caring, man.

"Travis had a younger brother, Darren. What happened to him?"

"I don't know. Cops took him with them." 

John has had enough of this heartless void. He just pushes past him, knocking him to the side with his shoulder. 

"Hey, when can I clean this place up and get a new tenant in here?" Man, if you don't stop talking, it's going to be your blood on the floor next. Reese vanishes.

Next morning, John pops into the back seat of Carter's car for some info. "Morning, Detective." He grins in her rear view mirror. "Miss me?"

"You know, I always pictured you in the back of my car. In handcuffs."

"Well, to each his own." Or her own. "Any luck pulling that file?"

She hands it backwards without looking. "Travis McGrady. Took two shots to the chest, point blank. Three Black males were seen fleeing the building."

"What about the brother, Darren?" He flips through to a photo. Cute kid.

"Came home after it happened. Found Travis bleeding out." Oh, Jesus. This poor kid. It's killing Carter to think about it too. 

"Says here he called 911."

"Yeah, it took half an hour for first responders to show up. Travis was already dead." Wow, and the little brother had to sit there helplessly and watch. Horrifying.

"What happened to the parents?"

"No father in the picture. Mother died of renal failure three years ago, so Travis was Darren's legal guardian."

"Now he's got nobody." They're both torn up by the plight of this poor boy. "Any idea where he is now?"

"Missing. Kid waited all night at the precinct for child services. When he didn't show up, he just up and walked out." Total failure by everyone everywhere for this child. Authority has been useless to him.

"I need to track him down... fast." John goes to jump out of the car, but Carter stops him.

"Hey. You ever gonna tell me exactly how you and your friend pick the people you're chasing?"

John looks at her with those blue eyes in the mirror, the slightest smirk on his lips. She can't help a bit of a smile back. _Yeah, that's what I thought_ , she thinks. She loves John and she hates him. Her face flips from fondness to frustration thinking about how in the dark he always leaves her. But there's work to be done.

"All right. I'll talk to the detective assigned on the case. See if there's anything he left out of that report."

"Like how he lost the kid." John's so angry.

The detective on the case could not possibly care less. "Since when does a homicide task force want in on a shooting in Crown Heights? Don't you have something more high profile to work? Like that guy who's kneecapping everybody." Yeah, who knows, that's a great mystery.

Carter makes up some story about the Chief of D's, as she puts it, wanting to polish "compstat numbers" and ordering them to look into any open cases. 

The guy caves and starts telling his story about "the victim", which Carter instantly does not take kindly to.

" _Travis_ , right? His name is Travis?"

This old white asshole smiles condescendingly. "Right, this Travis..." The story is about Travis working at his job and defending a waitress against three dudes hassling her. He's completely casual about the whole thing, making assumptions and just going with them as truth. "Now the little brother... he said, uh, they took his work hat." 

"Any leads on the three suspects? Waitress give a description? Anything?"

"In that neighborhood? Are you kidding?" No, she's not. "Ain't nobody gonna dime out those thugs."

Carter is so over this empty sack of shit. "Any progress on finding the little brother, Darren?"

"I don't have time to chase after every kid who can't sit still." Oh my god, Joss, would you just sic John on this guy and be done with him?

"Of course not. When _I_ find him, I'll let him know you were a big help."

Finch is still working and building his new setup. He's got a power supply out in front of him now, the colored wires in the strip dangling to the side.

"Sounds like Darren's little brother picked a fight with the wrong crowd," John says, looking into the distance, standing above. "If they think Darren saw anything that night, they'll be looking to silence him next."

"So we don't have a clue where Darren is or who the shooters are." Finch sits down at his desk, licks his lips. He may be about to fire something up for the first time. 

"The witnesses can ID the shooters. They're just too scared." 

Finch turns around, realizing what John is implying. "Why would they want to talk to you?"

Reese takes his coat, smirks. "I have my ways." And he's gone again, as ever pointlessly mysterious.

He shows up at the Thighs and Fries restaurant Travis worked at and follows a girl out. "Excuse me. Lisa?"

She turns around, sees this white man in a suit and shakes her head, knowing what this has to be about. "Sorry, I'm running late for something. Besides, I already told the police everything I know about Travis and those guys."

He brushes her arm softly. "I'm not a cop. I'm looking for Darren McGrady, Travis' little brother."

"I'm sorry, I can't help you."

This time when he reaches out, he holds her arm. "I know you're afraid. Just like I'm sure Travis was scared when he stuck up for you against those thugs. But he did it anyway." This poor girl. As if she doesn't have enough guilt about this already. 

Lisa takes a breath. "Those guys come in there all the time, grabbing and hollering. I don't know what the hell he was thinking."

"He cared for you," John says, his head leaned slightly toward her, locking eyes with her, but in his gentlest mode. "Just like he cared for his little brother, Darren. The guys that killed Travis may be coming after Darren now. I need your help tracking them down."

"Look, I want to help, but..." She is so scared. 

"You don't have to give me a name. Just point me in the right direction." 

She shifts her weight and decides. "Guys like you, coming out of the shadows, looking for bad guys, you'd fit right in at the comic book store... a couple blocks that way." She nods her head. "They hang out there." He thanks her and heads in that direction. 

The comic book store is popular, with lots of kids outside, which makes sense since the owner is out front giving away free comics to them. He's neighborhood friendly in that "say hi to your mom" kind of way. One asks him a question.

"Mr. Wilcox. What's this dude's superpower? He got no costume, no cape."

"'Cause being a superhero is not about a cape or a cowl..." Or a suit. "It's about protecting your fellow man, watching out for him when no one else will." Reese is watching this whole thing. Does he absorb the idea this could just as well be about him or is he too damaged to see himself positively that way?

Somebody comes out of the store and pushes his way past the owner and the kid he's talking to very rudely. "Uh... excuse you," says the owner. The rude guy in a hurry just happens to be wearing a Thighs and Fries hat.

"Hey, Carter," Reese says over the com. "I may have found one of our shooters. Corner of Crown and Albany, headed south."

"I'm two minutes away, be right there." 

John's 15 seconds behind him on the sidewalk already. But then he sees a kid in a hoodie and blue backpack on the other side of the street, rocking back and forth on his heels, looking for something. Or someone.

"Finch, I got eyes on Darren."

"Is he safe, Mr. Reese?"

"Not for long." Because Darren is on his way directly up to Hat Guy.

"Yo, Brick!" Darren yells. "Take off that hat." He's got his hand in his jacket, like his hiding something. Like he's hiding a gun.

"Who do you think you're talking to, Shorty?"

And Darren brings a pistol out at this Brick here. "One of the spineless punks that killed my brother – shot him dead in our home." His hand shakes a little, but his voice is all brave steel. 

"Want me to show you how to use that thing, little man?"

And maybe Brick would have just then lost his head but John gets there first and pushes the gun up and away when it goes off so that it fires into the sky. He grabs Darren by the hoodie and holds him fast. 

Brick's digging out his phone to call his boys. "This fool is as good as dead." But then he turns around to realize John's got him at gunpoint now.

"I won't miss," he promises. "Drop your phone." Brick doesn't have much of a choice.

Darren is howling all the while about John holding him, but he can't get out of his grip. He still keeps threatening as Carter pulls up. "Hey man, this ain't over. I'ma kill you and the rest of your crew."

"Yeah, we'll see about that. My boys will be looking for you."

Carter's not too pleased about the situation she's suddenly thrown into. "I see you made friends as usual."

"Found our missing kid. Now I got to get him out of here." John nods toward Brick. "He's your murder suspect." While Carter arrests him, John swipes Brick's phone off the ground and leaves with Darren in tow, literally.

"Where you going?" Carter yells. Sirens are coming in the distance.

"Got to get him somewhere safe. Sorry!" He stuffs Darren in a car and drives off, in such a hurry he has to close the door as he's already moving. 

Somewhere else, he's sitting in the car with Darren, and they're listening to the police band talking about all units responding to shots fired where Darren tried to take down Brick. Is this Carter's car? Did John just steal it?

Darren is furious over in the passenger seat. "Didn't know cops could pick and choose which calls to answer."

"Never said I was a cop." Oh, so you're a kidnapper.

"So, what are you, then?" Yeah, good question.

"One of these days I'm going to have to come up with a good answer for that one." John takes out Darren's gun. "It's a nice piece, considering you bought it off the street." He flicks the cartridge out, tosses the now useless gun in the back seat. "Where'd you get the cash?"

"Pawned a TV. Sold some stuff."

"Saw you play the trumpet. I'm guessing you pawned that too. You any good?"

"What do you think?" Darren's still mad, but John's softly smiling now. _All right, fine_ , Darren thinks. "My brother wanted me to go to music school... instead of getting mixed up with the thugs."

"And here you are, mixed up with the thugs." Aww. Darren drops his head. "So you tracked down that Brick kid. You think that's what your brother would have wanted you to do?"

"Saw him wearing that hat like it was some type of scalp." Ouch, that's an astute and painful observation for a kid. "It wasn't right."

"I'll take care of it," John says. 

"You?" Darren scoffs. "How?" John starts driving them off. "Wait a minute. Where we going?"

When they pull up to the group home, Fusco's already outside waiting for them. 

"Darren, this is Detective Fusco. He's a... _friend_." That is the most awkwardly stated, obviously faked use of the word in history. We still have a way left to go on making that legitimate.

"This guy?"

John doesn't have a choice. He just nods, although as small as he can. "Yup."

"Oh, hell no." Can't blame the kid on this one. He's seen what fat white cops do when they "help". 

"What's your problem, half pint?" Lionel, don't you have a boy of your own about this age?

"Man, you're a dirty cop all day long." Haha, Darren can just smell it off of him like a stench.

Lionel leans in toward Reese. "All right, look. First you got me investigating our mutual friend. Now I got to babysit this disrespectful punk? I have a day job." Do you, though? "Carter's gonna start asking a lot more questions." Oh, I think you're okay on that front. 

John stares him down. "You leave Carter to me. Now is this place safe?"

"Yeah. She likes to help kids. She hates paperwork. She takes in strays all the time."

"I'm not a stray," Darren contends. 

"He'll be safe here."

"Good. I'll be back, but until then, he doesn't leave your sight." It's cold, you can see John's breath.

"Yo, you really gonna leave me here?"

"Not for long. Gotta return a vehicle." So it is Carter's car? Wouldn't Fusco have noticed? 

In the car, John watches them go. He lets out a heavy breath. This is a tough one, sad and painful. Beside him is Darren's notebook, filled with his drawings. They're not bad. One of them is of Brick. 

Speaking of the devil, he's in Carter's interrogation room. 

"Bad luck," she says as she walks in. "You walking around wearing a dead guy's hat. Where'd you get it?"

"Found it. In the street. I like the way it fit."

"Yeah, well, that hat is in the lab right now. DNA always tells the truth. Better for both of us if I heard it from you." 

"Takes three months to get those results back, so either we're gonna get cozy in here, or you can just give me my phone call now." 

"Phone's busted. Budget cuts. You know how these things go."

"Whatever. You can't hold me if you can't charge me." Brick's a murderer, but he knows his rights.

"Yeah, that's right. You've done all this before, right? Yeah, well, you're right about one thing. You'll get out of here..." She circles behind him, shoves him forward in his chair and leans in close. "When I take you to your arraignment."

We're watching outdoor basketball with lots of people and excitement while Reese looks on and continues to leaf through Darren's notebook from his surveillance perch behind some fire escape stairs. He brings out the zoom lens camera for a better view of the audience on the other side of the fence. One pulls his phone out again.

John's already bluejacked it. It's yet another text trying to get to Brick. Something about business as usual, and John watches them go to an exchange with an envelope stuffed with bills. He heads back to the library to discuss his findings.

"Nice cars, cash in envelopes... these guys aren't street thugs, Finch. They've got some kind of operation. Any way to run the plates?"

And we realize that Reese may be at the library, but Finch is somewhere else on the phone, backlit by a window. His phone is a smartphone, in a leather-lined fancy case. He spins gently back and forth in the office chair he's in.

"I'm still rebuilding the drives. Had to make a hardware run. If all goes well, we're looking at a... couple of hours."

"Good. I'll check with Detective Fusco. Is everything all right, Finch?" He can tell it's not. It hasn't been for a while now.

"Just fine, Mr. Reese," Finch lies, too casually. They hang up and we get to see Finch in his office for the first time. A woman walks in.

"Mr. Wren, a man is here to see you. A Mr. Ingram." Ugh, that must hurt to hear every time.

"Of course, bring him in, please." This is quite an office. Huge wall of windows facing out across the water to another part of the city. Harold's insurance persona is doing remarkably well. 

"Will! How are you?"

Will comes in smiling with his arms out. "I'm well, Uncle Harold." They hug, and Will kind of takes a peek around. He's impressed. "As are you, evidently." Harold smiles and shrugs. "Business must be booming."

"Happily, yes. In the insurance business, the fewer bad things that happen in the universe, the more money we make." He's got a fancy little gilded globe on his desk along with various other business type tchotchkes. "Let me tie up a few loose ends and then we'll go to lunch." He starts scribbling on whatever paper's in front of him. 

"Take your time." Will decides to kill the time talking. "Almost finished sorting through all of Dad's stuff."

Harold lifts his eyes for a second. "Find anything interesting?"

"One or two things I'm sure he would have wanted you to have. Mostly it was boring stuff, except... except for this." And he pulls out a wadded up piece of paper in a ball. "Which is just strange."

He hands it over and Finch unrolls it. His heart stops when he sees it. It's a champagne cork wrapped in a napkin. In Nathan's hand, it says "day one the machine 2/24/05". It couldn't be any more specific. Or any more terrifying. He reads it out loud, unable to believe it exists.

"It's interesting, isn't it?"

"Is it?" GEE, SEEMS PRETTY BORING, LET'S JUST TOSS IT, SHALL WE????

"I told you I'm looking into that period when Dad shut down operations at the company." Harold puts the cork back inside and wraps the napkin up carefully. "This is right in the middle of that. Now, obviously he was celebrating something, but what? A machine? _The_ machine?" It really helps that non-techie types don't immediately think of a computer when they hear the word machine. Only someone who has built one uses it that way first.

Harold looks up, trying to look dumbfounded. "I wouldn't know. You know your dad – any excuse for champagne."

"Well, I guess you're right." He reaches for it back. "But there's still one person who I think of who might know. You probably know her too... Alicia Corwin?" NONONONONONONO

Good thing Harold's good at deadpan. He squints, thinking. "No... I don't think so."

"Hers is the only name that appears in any of the files during that seven year blackout, and she worked for the White House." Finch puts his concentration back onto the paper in front of him. Much easier to keep a straight face look at text than looking straight into Nathan's eyes. "I guess they were in touch... about something."

"Have you been in contact with her?" He asks the most serious question with a smile, keeping things as light and casual as he humanly can.

"It wasn't easy. After she quit her job at the government a year ago, after dad died, she moved to this remote town in West Virginia. Green Bank."

"Never heard of it." 

"Me neither. Turns out, it's the only place in the US that doesn't have cell phones or wireless internet. Apparently they do something to the radio telescopes."

"Are you sure you're not chasing shadows here, Will?"

"Maybe, except for one thing. Remember that contract that Dad signed with the government for $1? It's the next day – February 25, 2005." 

"Wow." This is tremendously bad and Harold can't think of a way to stop it. Any move he makes to prevent Will from moving forward with this thought only makes it more likely that he'll give himself – and the Machine's true identity – away. "Well, that is something. I'm finished here, and I'm starving. Let's get out of here."

His phone beeps and he picks it up. He's bluejacked Will's phone. This is getting out of hand fast.

Outside, Fusco takes pictures of them when they walk out. He's not trying to be sneaky much at all with his giant camera and his standing out in the open across the street. His phone rings. Whatever the person on the other side says, he's not happy.

"You're kidding me. When?"

Reese is sitting somewhere watching Trim arriving and sweetly greeting an old woman. His phone chirps.

"Hello, Lionel."

"Hey, I just got a call from the group home. Darren's missing." 

John cannot believe this. "What do you mean? I told you to check on him."

"I've been checking on him every hour. Why do you think they called me? Kid must have just walked out."

"Kid's got a habit of doing that."

"Yeah, well, just for the record, this is not my fault. Too busy playing private investigator for you." Reese watches Trim with probably his grandmother. They're smiling.

"And how's that going?"

"Interesting. I'll tell you when I know more. What are we gonna do about this kid?"

John looks back down at the drawing of Brick... and someplace called Ferdy's. "I think I know where he might be headed."

Ferdy's is a bar, it turns out, and sure enough, Darren's coming in right now, mouth running. "Yo, Hops and Barley..." he yells at some dudes on the stools. "Looking for a couple punks. Curtis and Trim. You know 'em?" 

The guys look at each other. _Is this kid for real?_ "Say what?"

"You heard me. Curtis and Trim." They get up and move closer to Darren. This is bad news, but Darren is too furious to be scared. "I'm callin' 'em out."

"You trying to get yourself killed, Scrappy Doo?"

"You're beginning to wear my last nerve. _You_ might be scared of 'em, but I'm not."

One guy grabs Darren by his coat. "You're about to get yourself tossed, dwarf."

"Not unless you care to follow him." John always has impeccable timing, such a knack for appearing inexplicably out of nowhere. "Why not let the kid go?"

Guy drops Darren, steps toward Reese. "And if I don't?" You get your orbital bones cracked. This isn't really rocket science.

Oh, but, it's not his face that gets smashed, it's his chest as John crams the heel of his hand directly into the guy's sternum. At the right time by chance, you could stop a heart that way. This guy will live, but he doubles over, useless. The other guy attempts to hit John with a bottle, but he goes flying instead. With both dudes on the ground, John grabs Darren and drags him out. 

At a diner somewhere, Darren is super excited about the fight he saw John win. "Boom, pow! Yo, now that was some straight up Shaolin and Wu-Tang whoopass!" John looks a little horrified as he flips through the notebook some more. This isn't really what he intended either. "What kind of fighting style is that?" 

"You're a smart, talented kid, Darren. You gotta promise me that you'll stop looking for these guys. It's too dangerous for you out there."

Darren looks down, decides something, and digs in his pocket. He puts a wad of singles and a quarter down on the table. His life savings. 

John picks it up. "What's this?"

"It's all I got left. I want to hire you to help me take down those guys who killed my brother."

This is not making John happy at all. The kid thinks he hurts people for money. "So if I'm not a cop, I'm a mercenary, is that it?"

He shakes his head. "No, I figured it out. You're a ronin."

"A ronin?"

"Yeah, a ronin. It's like..." and he digs through his pictures for the right one, one with a large sword. "It's like a samurai with no master. Technically, you should have killed yourself." Oh, Jesus, kid. He kind of tried. "That's the code. But instead, you're out wandering the land, helping people. So now I'm paying you to help me."

The truth is John does have a master now. Two, really, and they're the reason he's still alive.

He smiles sadly. "I'm not for hire."

"You can't stop me from going after them. But I have a better chance with _you_ there."

"There's no way to convince you to just lie low, huh?"

Darren shakes his head. Reese looks away, at a loss. He shoves the cash back. "All right. You can keep your money."

"Nah, man. Take it. It makes it official."

"No. If we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it my way." He brings up a finger. He's serious. "That means no killing." Darren is disappointed. John looks down, finds the quarter, holds it up. "This is my going rate."

"All right, man. Deal. Look, you're working for me now, I ought to know your name." 

"Uh, you can call me... Reese."

So now they're on the case together, back on that fire escape, listening in on the killers' chit chat down below. Darren's getting antsy already.

"Yo, I didn't hire you to just sit here and watch." Well, welcome to the spy game, kiddo. Most of it is deadly boring. The rest of it is just deadly. "When are we going to take them down?"

"We've already started. Step one: observe. The most efficient way to lose a fight is to act without knowing your enemy." 

Down below, the dudes are hustling some poor newspaper seller for cash. He begrudgingly hands over $300 in an envelope.

"That's protection," one of them says. "Where's the rest?" 

Guy talks about trying not to get caught selling tickets so he doesn't lose his legit lottery business. Darren asks John what the whole ticket business is about.

"They're running numbers through local shop owners. But they take all the money, tax free." John is a very good teacher, looking back and forth, talking to Darren as much like an adult as possible.

"The cops know about this, or they just don't care?"

"Probably giving them a cut to turn a blind eye." John hears the guys talking about some Andre. Darren doesn't know him either. He's still just upset about how useless the police are in this neighborhood.

"Man, these cops let these guys do whatever they want. Kill my brother, walk around like they can't be touched."

John nods his head toward him. "But now we know how they're making their money. So they just got a lot less untouchable." He smiles. It's sweet and sad that this is their bonding moment.

"Ah... _observe_." Darren is learning.

"To tell you the truth, I've always hated observing. Wait here." Don't leave this kid alone, John, he gets away like greased lightning.

John strolls casually to the dudes' SUV across the street from where they're still hassling that newspaper guy. He jimmies the door open in a flash. Then just as they're walking back, he speeds away in the car. They shout and chase, but it's a lost cause. Darren watches the whole thing and loves it. He answers his phone when it rings.

"That was step two, kid." John gives him a place to meet. When he gets there, Reese slides up quietly behind him, taps him on the wrong shoulder, then looks smug when he turns back. Darren just loves him.

"Hey, what's up, man? Where's Trim's car?"

"Strategically stored. Just needed to shake 'em up a bit... see what comes loose."

John's phone rings. He answers quietly. "I need GPS on their cell."'

"Just a minute." Finch is back in the library, finally back up to technological capacity again. "I'm not sure I'm in favor of your troubling arrangement with young Darren." Oh, Harold and his constant slanted understatement. Translation: this is an insanely dumb and dangerous idea and I hate it intensely.

"I'm not sure I'm in favor of _our_ troubling arrangement, especially when you disappear on mysterious business." John's really pissed off about this situation with Will. Finch could have told him about it, but that would have meant telling him far too much, being far too open, and he can never stand being that exposed.

"GPS is up, Mr. Reese." Harold doesn't offer a defense or anything else for that matter. He just sticks to business.

"Who you talking to?" Darren asks.

"Tech support. Come on." It's not wrong, exactly. It's just insulting.

Walking down the street, Darren has questions. They are... invasive. "Hey, you ever kill anyone?" Oh, Christ, kid, that's a whole can of painful worms you're opening. 

John takes a moment, then decides on honesty if not elaboration. "Yes."

"Were they bad?" God, how he wishes they all had been.

"Some... not all."

"Some? That means your master tricked you, told you to kill bad people who really weren't." This kid is disturbingly on the money, of course. That trick damaged John's soul forever. "A lot of ronin ended up that way." 

John says nothing, trying not to think about it, trying not to feel, trying to keep himself focused on the task. 

"So... step three?"

"Impose your will on your enemy, and make for their weak points." 

"Oh.. Talking Art of War." Darren's well read. That gets John's attention.

"You read Sun Tzu?"

"Of course, man. All samurai know Sun Tzu." John loves this kid so much.

They're listening to the guys. Trim is ballistic about his car, but it was stolen in the first place, so they're out of luck. He tells his buddy to go get his grandma's old beater. "Big money run tonight."

"Steps four and five. Find the boss and figure out how to hurt him. Come on."

At the station, Carter's still got Brick stuck in the room, although her captain is starting to ask questions.

"I'm just waiting for a photo packet. We have until tomorrow to arraign him, Captain. I'm still collecting evidence."

"You're reaching, Carter. If that kid's not arraigned by 5:00, I want you to kick him."

She knows she can't get it done by then, but her hands are tied with police rules.

That night, John and Darren are watching the guys in grandma's old boat of a Buick. They're at the comic book store.

"Now, remember," says the store owner to some more kids. "It's not about the superpowers, it's about who protects you and who keeps you safe." Does he do anything other than just hand out free comics and comic book philosophy?

Dudes roll up. Darren's disappointed. "Man, they got Mr. Wilcox selling those tickets too?" He starts to go intervene, but John grabs him by the arm and pulls him back.

"I'm not sure it's that simple."

"You're late." Yep, the owner knows them and they know him.

"Had a little car trouble, Andre." 

Darren can't believe it. "That's Andre?"

"The higher up you go," John says, "the harder it gets to tell the good guys from the bad."

Inside, they have a conversation. Andre hates the car they're in. "You're going to move half a million dollars of my money in that piece of–" 

But they turn lemons into lemonade. "That's why we got it, Andre. Switching up the cars, switching up the routes, just to be safe."

"I still smell you lying a mile away." They're asking questions about Brick being with the cops. "You don't need to worry about Brick, you need to worry about me. Do whatever I tell you to do, get me whatever I want, and right now I want my damn money in Brighton Beach _tonight_." Brighton Beach. We all know who's there.

Darren feels good about what they've learned. "Now we know who's weak, who's in charge, and how to hurt him. What's step six, man?"

John smiles. "Well, that's the fun part. Come on."

In the dudes' car, one of them is worried about Brick flipping, but the other has faith in Andre that he'll take care of all of them so they don't need to worry. It's all pretty casual, until the passenger notices something.

"Yo, Trim. Ain't that your ride?"

Why yes it is, barrelling toward their driver's side door at top speed. It's quite a crash. Grandma's going to need a new way to get to bingo. John strolls casually through scattered glass shards across the blacktop to the car. Trim and the other guy are half conscious, lolling in the front seats. John leans in.

"Found your car," he says with a grin.

Next day, two cops get in their police car. But there's some smell, cheap booze, and the sound of empty glass bottles rattling together. In the back seat, it's Trim, just waking up and only in his boxers. 

The cops laugh and laugh. "Wrong place to sleep it off, buddy."

Later, Carter's walking somewhere and calling John. "You and I need to talk."

"In the middle of something, Carter."

"I heard about your little traffic accident. What have you gotten that kid mixed up in?" Carter and Finch don't trust John with children, and for good reason.

"Don't worry. He wasn't in the car." Oh, sure, that's all she needed to know, nevermind.

"That boy is a _minor_. You're responsible for his welfare." And by _you_ , she means her, because she's letting this happen, so John had better watch himself.

"You still have Brick?" There's something, someone moving behind John, but it's too blurry to see. 

"Yeah. Womack thinks I released him this morning. What about that other guy you slammed into last night?"

"He's about to debrief us on Travis McGrady's murder."

Once they hang up, we see John has a hostage. Mr. Passenger Seat is now tied to a chair. Reese takes the gag out of his mouth to start their conversation. 

"You can scream if you want." 

"Kiss my ass."

John sits down beside him, facing him. "Where'd you dump the gun?"

"What gun?"

John looks disappointed, reaches down. When his gloved hand comes back up, he's holding a big acetylene torch. He presses the igniter and it fires up bright blue with a whoosh. His hostage is watching him now. Sweat starts beading on his forehead.

"The gun you used to kill Travis McGrady."

"Travis who?"

John waits a second, realizes he's going to have to up the ante. He puts the torch down, brings up a black bag instead.

"This money is supposed to be in Brighton Beach." He paws through the stacks. "Trouble is, it's here with you in Crown Heights."

Passenger shakes his head. "Andre's gonna kill you..."

John leans back in toward him. "Do you really think Andre would believe your story? If I were Andre, I'd assume you stole every dime. I'd send people in to find it, then kill you." His soft, calm voice is terrifying. "So the only way you're going to survive is if you come back with every last dime."

He pulls the torch back up. The blue flame sits just next to Passenger's face. He never takes his eyes from it. 

"So who killed Travis McGrady?" 

Passenger looks away, tries to keep his head down and not see the man who would kill him and the hideous tool he would use to do it. 

"Right now your life is worth half a million dollars." John grabs one of the bundles of cash and puts it to the torch. It catches instantly, burns to pieces in seconds. "Twenty thousand of it. Up in smoke." 

That got the guy's attention, but he's still not talking. 

"Where's the gun, Curtis?" He takes another handful of cash. "Fifty thousand of your life up in smoke." John is torturing the money rather than his hostage. He is allowed and openly encouraged to follow his good conscience.

Curtis struggles at his bonds, but John doesn't make ties you can just pull yourself out of. At his feet, the money is still burning in a little bonfire.

"Andre's gonna believe me."

"Let's find out." John takes the entire bag and puts it next to the small fire. He'll just have to make a bigger one. Just as he puts the torch to the fabric of the bag, Curtis starts yelling.

"Don't! No! Stop, stop, stop!"

"Where's the murder weapon?"

Curtis is doused in sweat now. "Chimney. Top of my grandma's building." His poor grandma. 

John clicks the torch off. The hiss of the gas finally goes away. "It better be."

Meanwhile, Finch is on his own mission. He's tailing Will, who's meeting Alicia Corwin in a park somewhere. Her voice is far weaker and more fearful than it was in those years past.

"Hello, Will. Long time."

"Thanks for meeting me, Alicia. Maybe we should go to a cafe or bar... somewhere warm?"

She looks around. The woman is haunted behind her eyes. "If you don't mind, I prefer it outside." She gestures him to a park bench. "I'm so sorry I couldn't make your father's funeral. I really wanted to be there." But she also wanted to stay alive.

Finch is listening from behind a tree. The last time he listened to Alicia talk to an Ingram from behind a tree, things were so much different. They were both freer people then.

"It was just a... difficult time for me," she says. There are caught tears in her voice. "He was such a lovely man."

"I just wish I'd known him better." From Will's perspective, this is rough. Everyone thought his father was such a sweet, wonderful person. He only knew him as the distant dad who cheated on his mom and then died. "Here. That's why I wanted to meet you." He hands over the napkin. Just as Harold did, Alicia unwraps it and tries to pretend it's incomprehensible to her. "I found it in his things. I wondered if you knew anything about it."

She shakes her head, as silent as Harold had been. 

"Well, he signed a contract with the government the next day for $1. For what? I don't know. It just said, "services". But I'm pretty sure that it had something to do with the work he was doing at IFT while they were closed. I was hoping you could tell me."

Alicia looks down at her past returned to haunt her. She'll never outrun it, she knows, but god knows she wishes she could. She looks up at him.

"Are you really sure you want to know?" 

"Yes, I do."

Over behind the sycamore, Harold looks on in terror. Everything he did to protect those around him would come crashing down with the truth. But there's nothing he can do to stop it now. He waits.

She looks over this decent and curious young man, innocent of all the misery the thing on the napkin has wrought. He doesn't deserve to suffer with this knowledge, for the sins of his father. 

"IFT was about to fail. Your dad's investments had backfired. His R&D had produced nothing for years. He came to me for help."

Back over in the shadows, Harold is stunned, grateful, confused, still scared.

"I persuaded the government to bail him out in exchange for some of IFT's patents."

Will is confused. And crushed. "That's what this was about? A dollar for Dad's patents?"

"I'm afraid so." She hands the napkin back. 

"So this is about the government helping him... or screwing him, but... why drink champagne? And what does it mean, "the machine"? Crushed by the machine?"

"I suppose, yes, in a way he was crushed by the machine..." They all were. Harold was. She was. "Going through a divorce, his company collapsing. Your dad was in a dark place." Finch listens still, eyes shining, thinking of Nathan, thinking of all they've lost. "I know it must be tough to think of his final days that way, but... _let it go, Will_." For both of their sakes, she's begging him to let it go.

"You sound just like my uncle Harold." NONONONONONONONONO

Well, Harold, this is exactly why you should have known you could not have it both ways. You cannot be both alive and dead. It's one or the other and for you, it's a matter of choosing what kind of dead you want to be. Pretend dead or the real thing while endangering the few people you have ever loved?

"I do?" Harold and Alicia are both instantly frozen. For both of them, this is an incredibly terrible, terrifying reveal. Alicia realizes she's not alone and Harold is exposed for the first time since the ferry. "Who's he?"

"My dad's best friend, Harold Wren? Are you sure you two never met?" Uh... he was not exactly calling himself that when she met him.

"No. We haven't." She looks around, now sure she's doomed. "I have to go. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help." She can't get away from this fast enough. Will just sits, utterly confused. Harold wanders away too, unsure of what this will mean or what will have to happen now. 

That night, Andre is reporting to that HR captain Reese almost threw off a building that time Elias put a hit on Carter. He's still up on that building now, having the chat with Andre. "I'm missing two couriers and half a million dollars of Brighton Beach money." Yeah, that sounds like a problem. "Okay, I need your help!"

Captain's having none of it. "You're on your own with this one."

"This was out of my control!"

"Force majeure is not covered by our protection. Our associates blame you for this debacle. Fix it. Fast."

Andre agrees, but he asks for something. He wants Brick freed from custody. Captain agrees to see what he can do, which being this small world, probably means leaning on Fusco.

Sure enough, guess who rolls up in the station in the morning. "How are you, Detective?" He wanders by Fusco's desk, but keeps walking. Lionel's none too pleased to see him.

Carter comes by. "That's a friend of yours?"

"Yeah." Sure, let's go with _friend_. HR captain goes to talk to the station captain, and he hangs up the old phone he's on with a loud metallic ding of the bell as if it were still mechanical.

"Carter," the station captain says, on her the instant he's out of his office. "You still have that suspect in holding?"

She doesn't have any choice but to tell the truth. Or at least a version of it. "I was just about to let him go."

"You should have done that hours ago. Not a bright move, Detective. Release the suspect now."

HR captain guy nods from behind, mumbles a thanks, and walks out past all of them. Everyone knows who calls the shots here now.

Reese is still hanging out with Darren on another rooftop somewhere. This is grandma's chimney.

"Sorry I thought you were a cop."

"Nothing wrong with cops...." He tosses his head, deciding to amend that. "Just bad ones."

Together and with the help of some giant pole John's gotten his hands on, they drag up the gun.

"We got 'em, kid. It's over. We got the evidence. My friend on the police force will be able to put Brick and his friends away."

"Yeah, but what about Andre? He's still out there."

"Andre didn't kill your brother. Now you want to go after him too?"

"Hell yeah. He's just as to blame."

"Then what, hmm?" John leans over his hands on the chimney. "Go after Andre's bosses... the corrupt cops and the politicians that let them operate? You won't be able to stop until you destroy everyone you blame for taking your brother's life. It won't bring him back." John knows about the futility of revenge. "You'll just wind up in jail. Or dead. Do you think that's what your brother wanted for you?"

Carter's phone rings. "There you are."

"Anonymous tip just came in, Detective. Got you the murder weapon. You can go ahead and charge Brick."

"It's gonna be kind of difficult. I just released him ten minutes ago."

Oh, no. John can't believe it. He wanders a few feet away to talk to her not right next to Darren. "Brick's on the street?"

"Womack forced my hand," she whispers. 

"He'll be able to ID Darren to Andre."

"All the more reason why you need to get that kid off the street _now_."

"Don't worry. I'll get you the gun along with the kid." Or he would, but Darren has pulled his vanishing act again when he turns back around. "Darren!"

"What's going on?" Carter knows he's messed up in the worst way.

He dashes about a bit, leaning over railings. Nothing. "Carter... You're gonna say, "I told you so.""

Now John has to report into HQ too. Oh, good. "Finch, Darren's run off, probably to go after Brick again. And this time he's got the gun they used to kill his brother." Really excellent work, John. A+ all the way around.

"In other words," he says, limping through the library full of blue shadows, "the idea of letting a 14-year-old hire you to avenge his brother has _backfired_?" Wow, you don't say!

"You can lecture me later. Right now I need you to bring me the bag."

"Which bag?"

"The one labeled Plan B..." There's nothing pleasant in there for sure.

Carter's on her way out of the station to help. Fusco's serious when he asks her, "Hey, you need backup?"

"I don't know, do I?" She was none too pleased that the creepazoid obviously corrupt captain seemed awfully chummy with Fusco earlier.

"Figured it might've had something to do with that fish the captain had you throw back in the sea."

She looks furtive. "It might. I got a tip. You want to go fishing?"

Hell yes, Fusco wants to go fishing. It's a heck of a lot better than hanging out at this desk doing nothing, helping no one. He takes a peek over to make sure their captain isn't looking. When it's clear he's on the phone not paying attention, he stands up. "Yeah, sure. Why not?"

At the comic book store, they're counting money on top of the boxes of loose issues. Darren peeks his head in while the Machine watches. He sneaks to the back and just walks into the back room where Andre and Brick are working.

Andre can't believe it. "That's the kid?" Brick nods. "Darren, right? Yeah, I recognize you. We got something to talk about, right, you and me?" He steps closer.

Darren's not in the mood for conversation. The pistol comes out and he wastes no time in cocking it. Brick steps up, and he swings it over to his head instead. 

"Wow..." Andre is impressed by the stones on this kid. 

Elsewhere, Reese has his bag now, labeled exactly as he said, PLAN B, in all capital letters. Finch is there since he made the delivery, and he almost swallows his tongue when John pulls out the most enormous black death device he's ever seen out of the bag. 

"Darren's in there." Harold's afraid that John's already endangered the boy this much, and now he's going to risk his life with heavy weaponry?

"Relax, Finch. It's bean bag rounds." He hands a few tools to his partner. "Riot ammo." That does not seem to soothe Finch in the slightest. "I told the kid no killing." Harold has a giant bolt cutter. He squeezes it a few times, getting a feel. This is so much more hands on than he thought this partnership would be. "On my signal, you're gonna cut the power to the building." John cocks the bean bag gun. "That was the signal, Finch." He leaves to go cause some destruction, as he does.

Inside the store, Andre has his hands up. "It's pretty brave of you coming in here like that, Darren. I get it." All of a sudden, he drops his hands, looks over at Brick, who's the one being held at gunpoint at the moment. He has an idea. "I do. My man took someone from you, so you're here to take him from me. So go ahead and shoot him." Brick looks over. _WTF are you doing, man?_ "I mean, he's the one that screwed up in the first place, even put us in this situation. So you're doing me a favor here."

"Yo, Andre–" 

"Shut your mouth." Andre goes back to Darren. He gets a little closer with every word. "I see you got it in you. Yeah, you got that conviction." He circles around him. "It's a hard quality to find around here." He leans in close, the devil on his shoulder. "So you go ahead and pull that trigger." Darren's still thinking, Brick is shaking his head. Neither of them know what to do. Andre holds all the cards here. 

"You should come work for me," he says. "You're young enough, by the time you Brick's age, you'll be running these streets for me, son. Ain't nobody gonna touch you, you know why?" Andre looks back over at Brick, the cause of all this stupidity. "'Cause you smarter than the rest. Now you made it all the way here. Go ahead... and claim that reward."

Darren holds the gun up higher, straighter. He stares down the sight at the man who took his brother from him. "Claim it," Andre says. 

Brick is down to soft begging. "Man, come on, come on."

But Darren can't do it. He isn't this person. It's not who his brother raised him to be. He starts lowering the gun and immediately Andre just reaches over and takes it from him.

"Yeah, I thought that might happen." He pulls Darren close to him by his head, which quickly gets laced under his elbow into a lock. "I don't blame you, I blame the store." Now he's the one pointing the gun at Brick. "Kids spending their days reading these revenge stories, selling it like it's reality. But you know the thing about comic books? They're just comics." And now the gun is right up to Darren's face. 

And that's the moment the lights go out. Good job, Finch. In seconds, there's the sound of gunfire, flashes of muzzles. "What the hell is that?!" Reese has nightsight on his gun, so he's making quick work of all these gang pieces of shit with the beanbag rounds. He works his way toward the back, shooting Brick right in the face, but Andre sneaks through the door with Darren under his arm.

Carter and Fusco pull up, and she sends him behind the building, and immediately finds Andre holding Darren out front. It's a standoff. 

"NYPD! Drop your weapon!" 

Andre gets a few shots off after her. This is what, Carter's third officer involved shooting? Anyway, she dodges behind a car. Darren takes the chance to elbow Andre right in the testicles, so he doubles over and Darren runs. 

"Get down, kid!" Literally flying in from nowhere on the side is Fusco, jumping to push Darren out of the way as Andre fires in his direction. 

John shoots Andre twice from across the street with the giant terrifying beanbag rifle. He drops, groaning and gone.

Carter stands up. She'd been hiding behind the car Reese is standing in front of now. He came here not only to protect Darren but her too. She looks at him, then runs to take control of the situation. 

"Fusco!" It's quiet on the street now. "Fusco, you okay?" He's on the ground, clearly in pain. Darren's standing up from where he'd been knocked down.

"Yeah, just peachy!" Well, Lionel's in good enough shape to snark, so he's all right. Carter reaches for Darren. It's over.

The cavalry arrive, arrest Brick and all the other guys in the gang. Andre is the one they put in the van last. He'll be facing a crazy amount of time. 

Off to the side, Fusco is being taken away on his belly in a stretcher. He's been shot in the ass, of course. If it's lacking in dignity, it's Fusco.

"You know, whatever you got to say, save it," he says to Darren as he walks up with Carter. "I can already see the ass cake on my desk when I get back. 

The kid grins. "No, man, actually, I just wanted to say thank you for saving my life."

Fusco is so touched. This is all he ever wants, to do something real, to really help someone. And he did it. He nods. "You're welcome, kid." But it's still the most embarrassing thing that could possibly happen. Lionel yells at the EMTs. "Come on, let's go, get me out of here!"

Back at Finch's insurance office, Will's there to say goodbye for real this time.

"Just when I thought you were sticking around," Harold says, chuckling. 

"Manhattan, you know... got a little claustrophobic. And... a job's come up in Sudan." Of course it has.

"I'll be sorry to lose you again." And god, he will. You make my heart hurt so much, Harold. 

But he has something he needs to ask about, for all their sakes and safety. "That woman– I've forgotten her name. Did she tell you what you wanted to know?"

"Alicia Corwin. She told me some stuff. I don't know if it's what I wanted to know. You know, I had my dad on a pedestal. Loved him, hated him, but just always admired him. It's kind of hard to believe he was just an ordinary guy, made mistakes like everybody else." Your father was anything but ordinary, Will. 

"Well, whatever she told you, there's one thing you should know about him. Anytime anyone ever asked him what his proudest achievement was, he always said that it was you." Poor sweet Harold. Everytime he has to talk about Nathan in the past tense like this, you can hear the grief in the back of his voice.

Will nods and hugs him. "Thank you."

Harold holds him close. This is the last time he will ever see Nathan's only son, a man as giving and caring as his father, a boy who called him uncle, who he watched be born and grow up and who he loved as his own. It's for the best Will is leaving the country and the continent. He'll be safer far, far away. But when he goes, Harold will lose the last living piece of Nathan he had. The last _human_ living piece of Nathan, that is.

"Take care of yourself," he says as Will picks up his bags.

And he's gone, this good man and all that was left of Harold's old life, when there was happiness and friendship and hope. Will is safe now, but his being here has endangered Harold enormously. What happens next is impossible to say.

Elsewhere, Reese is driving Darren around. "You know, Fusco tells me they got a lead on a foster family."

Darren, in his hoodie, doesn't want that. "I had a family."

"Darren, we don't get to choose what happens to us... just what we do about it." Ugh, poor Reese, haunted by the ghosts of his past too. "I looked into them. They're good people."

"And if they aren't?"

John shrugs. "I'll take care of it." He holds up the quarter, flashes him a genuine smile. "I'm, uh, still on the clock."

Darren sighs, reaches for his notebook. "I'm still working on it, but... here. This is yours."

On wide ruled binder paper two figures are drawn, their arms folded, looking cool like a comic book cover. A version of Darren in a dress shirt open at the neck is on the right and above him on the left looms Reese as the Man in the Suit, guardian of the lost and the desperate.

"Would you look at that?" John is beyond touched, amazed. He looks over at Darren. "I always wanted a sidekick." Darren nods. "Thanks! Which, uh, reminds me... I pulled some strings." Well, Harold did. He strains a little reaching to the back seat to pull a trumpet from nowhere. "You'll be starting at that charter school for the arts."

Darren is amazed. John is magical. "My trumpet!"

"They got drawing classes too."

"Is that right?"

"Remember, opportunities multiply as they are seized."

"Sun Tzu, right." Darren knows John is hurting in his own way. "Hey, don't worry, man. Someday, you'll find a home too."

John looks over at him. "Thanks," is all he can bring himself to say to this sweet, empathetic kid. He hopes to god Darren is right. Is where he is now in his life a home? Could it ever be?

Fusco knocks on the window. "Come on, kid. They're waiting for you inside."

Darren steps out of the car and Reese's life.

"'Sup, Fusco! Hey, man, I think you're gonna need a bullet in that other cheek to even out that limp." 

Fusco laughs. "Good to see you too."

As Darren gets welcomed by a kind older lady into the nice looking house and away from them, Reese walks up beside Fusco. Darren turns around, salutes them both with the hand not holding his shining trumpet, and he disappears inside.

"He's a good kid," Lionel says. "Think he'll be all right?"

"He's a tough kid." That's not an answer.

"It's a good thing we showed up in time, you know. You're cutting it awfully close with Carter. She's still looking for you, last I checked."

"Like I said, you let me worry about Carter." There's threat in his voice. He's always protective of Joss. "Any news on that other thing?"

"Yeah. He's got so many aliases I don't even know where to start. Oldest one I could find is a Harold Wren. He's an underwriter for an insurance company for a number of years. Before that, MIT student, top of his class. It was there where he met the kid's dad, you know, Nathan Ingram. He's the billionaire that got killed a couple years back." 

You know, I don't think the story would be the billionaire that got killed, it would be the bloody and awful terrorist ferry bombing that killed a lot of people including a billionaire. You don't talk about the Titanic by starting with John Astor.

"Ingram..." They've got a folder, it's full of things we've seen and some we haven't. The news story about Nathan's death, the picture of him and Harold grinning when they were young. There's also a bigger headshot picture of Finch when he was young there too, that makes him look like a combination of Egon Spengler and Eraserhead. "Graduated from the same class as Wren."

"Yeah, except I did a little more digging. Wren was the name he used freshman year at MIT. That name doesn't appear on any records before '76, which tells me that Wren was a false identity too. This guy spent so much time being someone else, he probably doesn't know who he is anymore."

No, he knows. There's a core to him, a deep and compassionate soul. John knows. He's seen it. 

He remembers what Finch told him when they started this case. ""Only the paranoid survive..." You know, Lionel... you could have been a good cop if not for a few bad choices."

"You've got me snooping around your boss, but I make bad choices?" John hasn't tried to have Finch killed, Lionel, so yes, shut up.

Reese just shrugs. "Man has a point." He walks away. 

But one of our team is still watching. The Machine has heard all of this, this discussion and implied threat against her admin, her father. For the first time, she lines Reese in red, Fusco once again. 

SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR  
SECURITY BREACHED

COURSE OF ACTION:

EVALUATING OPTIONS...

MITIGATE  
SUBVERT   
MONITOR

"Monitor" blinks, the choice she's made. Good for them.

* * *

#### Notes

  * The episode title references _[Lone Wolf and Cub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub)_ , a 1970s manga about a ronin who brings his infant son along on his quest for vengeance after the death of his wife. This manga is also heavily referenced in the Disney+ show The Mandalorian.




	16. POI 1x15 - Blue Code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese gets into a smuggling ring where he's not the only one undercover and Fusco gets in deep in more ways than one.

### POI 1x15 - Blue Code

#### Landmarks

  * Fusco is found out by one of the HR brass and is nearly executed 
  * John saves Fusco but keeps him dirty, in deep and in debt with HR
  * Carter on duty shooting #?



#### Injuries

  * **John**
    * Knocked out with a crowbar to the back (#??)
    * Beaten with fists and a crowbar while restrained (#3)
    * Grazed by a bullet in a faked execution (#3)
    * Almost burns to death in the trunk of a car
  * **Fusco**
    * Knocked out with a punch (#2?)



* * *

We're by an ambulance. Finch's voice comes over John's com. "We have a new number, Mr. Reese." 

"That all you got, Finch?"

Harold's at the cracked glass, doing his taping ritual. He goes over the essentials. Early thirties, "single, no wife, no children, no pets. No attachments of any kind. A bit like <>you, Mr. Reese." Ouch, Harold. They're very standoffish in this episode. You'd think they'd have gained some more trust after Finch saved John's life and all, but it's been chilly.

The EMTs are moving a man with an oxygen mask. The helicopter with them tells them they're supposed to wait because INS wants him, but this guy Cahill says he just flew 15 hours for a heart transplant. "I'm not letting him code out here 16 blocks from the hospital."

"For all intents and purposes, Cahill appears to be an upstanding citizen."

"Appearances can be deceptive." 

In the ambulance, Cahill pulls the mask off the patient. "We're paying you good money, so just keep your mouth shut, okay?" They roll him over and flick open a knife to cut into the bed.

"Indeed. Cahill's a criminal. B&E, assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon. Now he's graduated to smuggling."

Smuggling diamonds we see as he unrolls a black velvet fabric concealing dozens of sparkling white stones. 

"Crew's run by a guy named Vargas. These guys will move anything. And if someone gets in their way, they'll kill everyone. How do you suggest we proceed, Mr. Reese?"

"As usual, Finch, the more dangerous they are..." And Vargas yells at the driver, who turns around and is of course our boy John. "...the closer I want to be to them." He drives them off.

Instantly, they run into trouble. A police car rings its siren at them to pull over. Hothead guy is agitated in the back, but Reese smoothly tells them to let him talk to the cop. 

The number cocks a gun. "I got this. Stay put." Yeah, John doesn't like this one bit. He leans to watch in the mirror and gets his gun ready too.

"Relax, kid. Cahill will talk us out of this." Yeah, he better talk and not anything else. "And if he can't, he'll just kill him. I never met a guy who hated cops as much as this guy." John is all squinty bundled fury, waiting to pounce if he has to. 

Little blonde guy in the back is starting to panic. "Yeah, well, what's taking him so long? He calls back up and we're all dead!"

Boss is chill. "He doesn't have backup. I'm all paid up with HR."

And he's right, it works just fine. Cahill strolls back. He has a comment for the antsy blonde guy. "You found this rig? Tail light's out. Our friend was just letting us know as a courtesy." 

Later, time to divide up the spoils. A jeweler weighs the diamonds out and puts some in a little velvet bag as you do. The smugglers get their cut in a little plastic baggie.

The blond gang member is a nightmare. The jeweler and the mob guy or whoever it is that he works for drives away and Blondie gets out his gun for a moment, laughing and licking his lips. "Thought I was going to have to waste them!" Yeah, well, try it and Reese wastes you.

Our number Mr. Cahill doesn't like this hothead crap at all. He grabs Blondie by the collar and pounds his face five or six times while everyone including John watches, eyes wide.

Boss guy tries to calm him down. "Kid's done enough learning for tonight."

"One more mistake, I kill him." 

Cahill and Reese douse the truck in gasoline and set it alight.

Later, John calls in. "Got a problem, Finch. Cahill's on the move."

"It's nearly 3 in the morning. Any idea where he's going?" Finch sounds tired, but if John's on the job, so is he.

"No. But whatever he's up to, can't be good." Yep, John gets proven right fast. "Cahill's casing a home." He gives Finch the address to check out. "He's breaking in, Finch. I need some information, _now_."

Finch is in the library at three in the morning still in a three piece suit. At least he could take his jacket off. Or his tie? Harold doesn't have to wear all his armor all the time but he always feels more comfortable in it. 

"Homeowner's name is Tulley..." He keeps reading and his heart stops. "He's a police officer! John, you've got to stop Cahill!"

And John's about to blow his head off from outside, but a little boy runs up to Cahill. "Daddy! You're home!" He's there with his mom, and both of them are happy to have Cahill or Tulley or whoever back. He puts his hand on her very pregnant belly. 

"Mr. Reese, it appears that you're not the only person working undercover." Finch has his photo from his graduating class at the NYPD academy.

We slide back to 2008. The Machine is checking out archived audio from a passive cell monitor.

NCS ARCHIVAL DATABASE  
CLANDESTINE OPS  
MISSION: UNNAMED  
PERSONNEL: REDACTED  
OBJECTIVE: CLASSIFIED  
LOCATION: UNDISCLOSED

Much creativity in all the different ways to say _secret_.

John's cleaning his gun listening to some German numbers station or something on the radio. Kara clicks it off.

"They might be updating our orders," he says.

"You think this is being run through Langley? We're not even supposed to operate in this godforsaken country." Langley... She looks down at him keeping himself busy while they wait. "How many times are you gonna clean that thing?"

"In the Army, they taught us the fastest way to get shot was to fail to clean your weapon."

"In the Marines, they taught us the fastest way to clean your weapon was to shoot a couple people with it." Ah, Kara, always with the sociopathy.

There's a knock, and she hands him her gun to clear the door. He opens the door with his weapon pointed at Mark Snow's head. He's got a bottle in a brown paper bag.

"Best I could do. Cheap Polish vodka. Package secure?"

"We have everything we need," John says. "Except the orders for where to deliver it."

"Almost everything. You're missing a glass."

Kara goes into the bathroom. "Found it." That's not all she's found. They have a bound and hooded hostage shivering in their bathtub.

"The package..." John leans his head toward the bathroom door. "What'd he do?" Reese always kept his soul, his humanity, even in these darkened days.

"Not our concern," Mark could not care less.

"Guy looks government. The natives don't like us taking their people," Kara says.

"He's government. Tried to sell something of ours to the Chinese." Snow's always very casual. He sits, half smiling, relaxed.

"What?"

"Software. Something. I don't know, don't care." We care. It's not just any software. "We've got one job in this. Render him to some black hole from which he will never return. If the papers don't clear, or the plane runs out of fuel, you execute him."

John doesn't love that, but he doesn't say anything either.

"When was the last time you were in country, my friend?" You're no one's friend, Snow, not even your own. "Call's not coming in tonight. Go get yourself some R&R." John's not going to turn down a chance to not be in this room anymore, with these people, watching a man die or at least wish he was dead. "Don't forget you're behind enemy lines. You get caught here, you're on your own."

_I'm always on my own_ , John thinks. He walks out of that dark hellhole into the light outside. This is no third world nowhere. "Behind enemy lines" is New York City. His eyes are dark as he walks, far away. This was once his home. But he knows he will never have a home again as long as he lives.

Back to the current day, John's still watching Cahill's house from his car as the sun comes up. Have they not slept at all?

"Cahill certainly had me fooled."

Finch is up and at 'em in this new morning as well. At least he looks like he's showered and dressed. His suit of armor is fresh and new too, this one flat black. "Cahill's real name is Daniel Tulley. Graduated from the police academy in 2003... Since then, all work records have disappeared. The NYPD seems to have gone to great lengths to hide his identity..."

John's watching the man laughing with his son at breakfast, cutting up pancakes for him. This is a happiness and domesticity John can't even imagine for himself.

Finch continues his analysis. He looks pale in the blue light of his screen. "...including a false Social Security number. But if the Machine gave us his number, it may mean that somebody's figured out he's a cop. We should warn him."

John's still watching this family, this glimpse into love and comfort he can never have. Guy's wife has come into the kitchen now and wraps herself around him. He squeezes her arms to him. "Risking his life is what he signed up for. We play this wrong... we could do more harm than good."

He watches Cahill leave to get into his car, but another man walks up and gets in the passenger side.

"We've got company, Finch."

The man throws a police badge at Cahill. "Why don't you just wear it if you're gonna go around announcing yourself? Less than a day away from the biggest collar of your career, you decide to take a holiday?"

"The man's Cahill's handler." Yeah, no kidding, John.

Cahill's been under too long. "I needed to feel normal." If he needed normal, he shouldn't have taken this job. His handler says they could pull him now and take Vargas, but Cahill says they could have done that five months ago. "LOS, that's the guy we want. Word is he's picking up the next shipment in person."

The handler thinks LOS is a fairytale, but Cahill holds up a baggie. "I took this from the last delivery from LOS. It's 100% pure. We found the big one, the direct source."

Handler still doesn't like it. "Whoever this LOS is, if no one's stepping on his shipments, there's a good reason. I don't want to end up in a dark suit, having to inform your wife–" 

"I'll take care of my end, you take care of yours." Cahill thinks Vargas has a cop on the take, which Reese should already know because the guy had mentioned paying off HR.

Elsewhere, Carter's getting to work, but she's stopped at the door by a familiar voice. Oh no, it's Snow. 

"Didn't realize you were still in town."

"I took a trip upstate. I'm sure now that our boy's working with a police officer."

"What makes you say that?" Such contempt in her face.

"Found his fingerprints at a veterinary clinic in the Catskills. And yet I am certain that John was never there." He takes a step closer to her. "I hope his new friend is luckier. John has a tendency to use people and then, well, discard them." No, that's you, Mark. "I remember his old partner's funeral like it was yesterday. A pretty woman. Like you." Yeah, and a remorseless psychopath incapable of human empathy. That too. "After he was done with her, not so much." It's all disgusting. Kara was/is nothing like Carter, and it wasn't John who sent a missile to blow her to kingdom come.

He walks off and she scowls at him bitterly as he leaves. Then literally seconds later, Finch steps up from behind her.

"A word, Detective?"

She can't believe it. "You do realize the man that shot John was just here?"

Harold's relaxed, although he looks past her down the street where Snow just went. "Agent Snow doesn't know about me... or my arrangement with our mutual friend." He pulls a picture from his inside pocket. "We need your help, Detective. This man is Michael Cahill, otherwise known as Daniel Tulley, narcotics detective working undercover with a smuggling ring, one that Mr. Reese has just infiltrated."

She scoffs and smiles. "Of course he has." 

"But we believe that there's a leak at the NYPD. I don't need to tell you what can happen if Cahill's cover is blown."

"And you expect me to find this leak."

"I just need you to explain the _system_." That gets her attention a bit. Finch isn't just demanding she work for him. He can do a lot on his own. He just needs her help with information first. "Who would know about Cahill's being undercover?"

"Only his handler." And we see that handler knock on IAB's door. A man pops out to meet him.

"What about the people who have access to his paperwork, files?"

"Files on undercovers are kept only as hard copies, so people like you can't hack into them." She actually gives him a warm look here. She knows he's incredibly skilled and talented. If it was possible, he would have already done it. 

"Words wound, Detective." Ha.

"The files are kept in safes in one room controlled by IAB." We watch the handler and IAB guy step into the room protected by a key card. However, only the handlers have the combinations to their UC's safe. Anyone _tries_ to break in, IAB will send them on a one-way trip to Rikers." In the room, the handler stashes Cahill's folder away for safekeeping.

Finch is thinking about their next steps, planning behind his dark eyes. "So we would need to destroy Cahill's file before anyone could retrieve it."

"We? Yeah, see, breaking into 1PP is a _federal offense_."

"I've got it covered." Harold has just the criminal trying to redeem himself for this job. He smiles kindly at her and turns to walk away.

That once and future criminal answers the phone at his desk. "Let me guess, you need another favor," Lionel says.

It's John asking this time. He's putting on his coat in the library. "Someone might be selling out an undercover narc to a smuggler named Vargas." He gets out his gun, checks the magazine. Better than the normal pointless cocking. "Pay some of your dirty buddies in narcotics a visit."

"Those guys don't exactly trust me anymore. I've been getting some good collars lately too. Even got a commendation." 

John's gun clicks with the cartridge locking in place. "Your ass got you that commendation." Hey, to his credit, it was the leap that moved that ass that did it. "Time to get your hands dirty again."

In some rain-slick nowhere alley, John and the smugglers get out of cars for a meeting. Things are already tense.

"Something's wrong, Finch. Vargas got a phone call, and he's not happy about it." John slight-of-hands his phone out of his pocket into his palm for a surreptitious pic. Now Finch has a license plate to work with. 

"...Because LOS will kill us if we don't," Vargas says over the line. Well, this conversation's clearly going beautifully. He hangs up and everybody heads into the back of a Chinese restaurant for some kind of meeting.

And we're off to a good start already because the Chinese guards are openly packing. John likes this not one bit. He's got his hair slicked back in his criminal role, and he's got his much darker t-shirt based ensemble on. He steps backward when he sees the gun, putting his back to the closest thing to a wall he has at the moment: a rolling shelf of metalware and bok choy. 

The man Vargas is meeting is behind a counter with a large bag of rice on it. He has a huge knife in his hand. "How many time I invite you for dinner?" He gestures in the air with the shining knife. "All business with you."

"Business is good. No time to eat." Vargas watches as the man cuts open the bag of rice and starts crushing the grains that tumble out with the flat of the blade. Instantly, everyone gets nervous. Blondie puts his hand on his gun first, meaning everyone else has to tighten up now too, from Reese to the Chinese guard with a Dirty Harry revolver. 

We hear the sound of scraping. The restaurateur has pushed over the remains of the crushed rice – it's cocaine. Vargas is impressed.

"You know, I've been thinking," the man says. "You and I might want to renegotiate our deal."

"You know, in our business, thinking... is the most dangerous thing you can start doing." No one in the room is happy. It's hard to say who's more ready to jump. 

"Or maybe I take the shipment directly to LOS," he says, jamming his knife underneath a pan to stash it. " _Cut you out._ "

Everybody's weapons come out at once. Only the Chinese drug lord has his hands empty. He puts them up casually, looking and speaking only to Vargas with his eyes and the tilt of his head. _You sure you want to do this and get everyone killed? It's up to you._ And he's right. Hard to spend your money if you're perforated. Vargas puts his gun up.

"Fine, fine. Tell you what. How about I give you a little something extra, okay? Just for you. Yeah?"

The man is about to be willing to entertain whatever offer Vargas has in mind, but Vargas brings his gun down all at once and shoots Drug Lord in the chest. Now everyone is shooting. Lucky for the smugglers, they have John on their side and he takes the biggest of the guards out in one shot before the guy's gun is even up. 

Everyone remaining is shooting, it's a loud chaotic mess. Blondie wrestles his arm around three bags of the cocaine rice and they all head toward the back door again. He's trying to grab the rest when a guard catches him in the thigh and he drops, screaming.

Cahill grabs Blondie and they make it outside. John's in the driver's seat, and he pulls away, tires squealing. 

They drive to a warehouse. It's big and dark, scattered with stacks of pallets and white bags. There's also a little living room there with a sectional couch in the middle of the space. It looks incongruously homey, with beer and boxed Chinese food sitting out on the glass coffee table. 

They shut the huge metal warehouse rolling doors and set Blondie up on the love seat, bleeding and groaning. Cahill's trying to keep him alive, but if the weakening sound of his breathing is any indication, he's losing the fight. And he didn't even get what he came for.

"Thought we were meeting LOS, boss."

"We are. Just making a little pitstop first." Blondie is crying now. Grim. Guess we're doing Reservoir Dogs. "Take your phones out and destroy them." 

John frowns. This is a serious escalation, and he's losing his line out.

Handler is in a police surveillance van with a computer guy who's bringing up the "drop location", and a ready team of SWAT guys. 

Reese smashes his phone on the concrete with his boot and from Finch's end there is a squeal of feedback as his line back to John drops out. His screen brings up a warning. 

[SIGNAL CONNECTION LOST]  
DEVICE NOT FOUND

He tries to reconnect but he knows it's not going to work.

Cahill snaps his flip phone in half and that means Handler's IT guy has lost his tracking too. 

Vargas brings a big black bag over to the couch. "Your weapons... toss 'em in. All of you. Now." Nobody is excited about this prospect but everyone obeys. John puts in an Uzi? 

Once everyone is disarmed, Vargas wastes no time. "One of you is a cop." Yep, it is Reservoir Dogs. "In an hour or two, I'm going to find out which one. Whoever's still alive will finish making this delivery." Cahill's worried and John's worried for him. Not himself, of course. Never himself.

We slide back to 2008. Obama is giving his acceptance speech.

Reese sits down next to a man in a tan suit at a bar. "Do you mind?"

The man pulls his briefcase back to him and his eyes drift back up to the speech.

"Hell of a thing, huh?" the guy says. 

John smiles, takes a drink of his beer. Guy next to him strikes up a conversation. 

"You, uh, live in New York or you just visiting?"

"Just visiting."

"Where you from?"

"Originally? Puyallup, Washington," he says, eyes on the man. 

"Are you kidding me? My wife's from Puyallup!" OH REALLY? "You still live there?"

"Not for a long time. I travel for work." True.

"Ah, I used to do that. It's brutal." John's eyes never leave him. This is a test. This is surveillance. "Not anymore." Peter is drunk, of course. "Me and the wife just put a down payment on our first house... up in New Rochelle." It's so torturous to know where this is going.

"You don't say. Sounds nice."

"Hey, you know what? My wife's running late, as usual. I better give her a call, make sure she's okay."

He bows away to make the call and John stares into the distance over his beer. This is the man who would make Jessica happy, the one who would make her safe. This is his first and only in-person assessment.

"What did I tell you, John?" Oh, no. It's Kara.

"You told me to get a drink."

"And of the eight million people you could be drinking with in New York City, you just happened to pick the one who's married to your ex?"

Busted. Poor John, like a puppy caught destroying the toilet paper. 

Today, Reese is in worse shape in every way, emotionally and in current physical danger. But at least he's not Blondie on the couch, who's down to just groaning. And begging.

"You gotta help me, please please please..."

Cahill knows it's bad. "He's losing too much blood, we should take him to the hospital."

"No one's going anywhere until I know which one of you is a rat." No one's budging yet. Cahill gives Blondie a bottle of water, tells him to sip it slowly. That gives him a chance to try to slip the guy's phone out, but he grabs him by the arm, begging to be taken to the hospital. 

A thug with feathered hair and a beard comes in from the side. "Shut it or I'll put you out of your misery myself."

But Blondie is in too much pain to stop. He cries and cries. "Help me, please..."

John's not just going to stand around and watch a man die. "We need to build a tourniquet."

Our bearded friend isn't interested. "Why bother?"

"If we stop the bleeding, it might get him to shut up." John found a way to stay más macho for show and still try to save a life.

At the police station behind mounds of paperwork, Carter looks up. "You guys get a call?"

Some cops tell her "someone lit up Su Chin's. Narco thing gone south. Damn shame. Best Kung Pao in Queens." (hey, didn't cop IT guy say the signal was in Brooklyn?)

"Sorry for your loss." Carter hates that kind of callousness. People are dead. That _matters_. It always matters. At least it does to her. 

The guys leave and wouldn't you know, her phone rings. It always rings when she hears something like that. Somehow they always know.

She pulls out the flip phone. Caller ID says Unknown. It's not unknown.

"Where's your partner? Oh, let me guess... _Queens_?"

"I'm... having a little trouble finding him, actually."

"You _lost him_?" She treats John like a trained lion, ultimately not in charge or especially in control. But Finch is both.

" _Lost_ would be a strong word, but yes, Detective, in answer to your unspoken question, I do need your help." He's pretty casual about John's disappearance.

"What you got?" She's reluctant, these guys are crazy, but damn if they're not always right and trying to do the right thing. They care and not everyone around her does.

He punches an image up on his screen. "A license plate."

John's twisting a piece of fabric around Blondie's leg with a rope. He saves lives with battlefield medicine as intensely as he takes (or alters) them with violence. His eyes are locked on his patient's. He reaches up to the pulse at his neck as Cahill bends down next to him. Blondie's fully unconscious now.

"He's lost a lot of blood. Think he'll make it?"

"Probably not. We did the best we could." There's such sorrow in his eyes. Every death is a loss. Everyone counts. John stands straight and walks away. Cahill watches him go. When he's far enough gone, he grabs Blondie's cell and texts the handler, still in the van. They immediately send multiple units. 

At that giant World's Fair globe, Fusco's meeting his regular goons. It's Simmons.

"Look at what the cat dragged in. You look terrible."

"Look at you. You might want to lay off the brown liquor." 

"So what do I owe the, uh, pleasure?"

"Smuggler by the name of Vargas, ever heard of him? Want to twist his arm a little bit, see if I can get a percentage of his scores. Thought maybe you might want to get in?"

Nice try. "I don't hear a peep from you for three months, then all of a sudden you show up with this new score." But Lionel doesn't flinch. "Hard to twist a guy whose buddies wind up in prison. You want to shake down this Vargas? You gotta be a good boy and ask permission." Ahh, there's the old gang. "If this guy ain't already paid up with HR, you could have at it."

"Who do I contact if I want to contact HR?"

Simms looks down on him. "You already have."

Fusco's phone rings. He uses this as an opportunity to get away from this psycho.

It's Finch. "There's going to be a shift change at 1 Police Plaza. This may be our only opportunity."

"Opportunity for what?" Finch just goes from the frying pan to the fire in an endless loop.

For the first time, Fusco has Finch directly in his ear in some office corridor. 

"Are you in position, Detective?"

"Whoa, whoa, easy with the volume there. No wonder Mr. Sunshine's always in a foul mood."

"You'll get used to it. It takes a little time, which you're running out of." This is a great, if unexpected, dominance move. Finch is always boss in the best way. He commands respect and earns it. 

"Okay, okay. What's the plan, Kemosabe?" Yeah, Lionel's the kind who would make this antiquated reference.

"The plan is simple." Beware when Finch says something is simple. "The IAB detective that patrols the room makes one more inspection before the next shift begins. That will give you approximately 8 and a half minutes to spoof the key card, break into the safe, and retrieve Tulley's file before Vargas' informant can get to it." 

"Yeah, sure. Sounds simple."

"Make sure you point the reader at the keycard." Fusco will have to get used to Finch's technological solutions as well. 

"Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah. Don't get caught."

"Thanks a lot. I'll try my best." Poor Fusco, no respect at all. He turns a corner and... oh shit. It's Carter.

"Fusco... what are you doing here?" She's really not happy to see him either. It's pretty great they're both suspicious for the same reason.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh, I was just leaving." 

"Ah, I'm just, uh, running an errand for the captain." _Thank you for that obvious lie. Here is one of my own. Let's go our separate ways now please._

"Later."

"Yeah, you have a good day." They pass each other, but both steal glances back. There's nothing good about the other one being there.

And now Finch gets to play both sides off the middle. Carter buzzes his phone and he hits a key to answer.

"Detective Carter."

"Got three possible hits on that license plate. It was logged by an automatic plate reader on a cruiser in South Brooklyn. I'm gonna start looking."

Finch's other agent is waiting on line 2. He has three to juggle now. This is way more complicated than he ever realized it was going to be. How did he get to be wrangling this menagerie? "I'm glad to hear it. Thank you, Detective." He switches back over to Fusco, who's now all upset.

"Finch? Finch, you there?"

"I'm here, go ahead." What a circus.

"All right. I'm going in now." He clicks the little gadget in his hand on. Then he promptly bumps directly into that IAB lady Finch was talking about earlier. There's the keycard. He's all apologies until she's gone, and he dashes to the door. 

And what do you know, Finch's magic works. "Presto. I'm in." Inside, he sprays the security cam blurry. "Okay. What now?"

"Turn off the fluorescents. Use that light I gave you." It's like guiding a kindergartner. "You see the prints?"

And again, sure enough Finch is right. "3, 5, 8."

"Start punching numbers. The code could be in any sequence." Oh, no, you're asking him to brute force a code? You need to take the lead on this. "We're running out of time, Detective!"

"I tried every combination. It's not working. A little help, please?"

"Was one of the prints smudged?"

"Yeah, 5's a little blurry, why?"

"It's used twice." I love you so much, Finch, and I love imagining how you got this information in your troublemaking past. He runs through a few possibilities. Third try's a charm.

"Can't believe it worked," Fusco says, amazed when the door pops open. Magic. "I've got Tulley's file."

"Good job, Detective. Tulley's safe for now. You have 23 seconds left." Wow, they cut it fine! Lionel pops the file in the shredder and it gets diced to oblivion. 

But just then the lights flick on. Busted. A guy stops in place. "Detective Fusco, right?" Oh, no. Finch listens in silence, unable to help. "My department investigated you and your buddies."

"Listen, this isn't what it looks like. I can explain." _I'm working with vigilantes now! It's totally different!_

"Explain shredding a confidential file." He pulls out his gun. "You're under arrest." The man takes him outside, stuffs him handcuffed into the passenger seat of his car.

Now Finch has lost two of his flock.

"I had to destroy that file," Lionel tries explaining when the man gets into the car. "There was a UC whose life was in danger."

"And you know this _how_?"

"I've got a guy... he tells me things." Harold Finch as the whispering angel of mortal danger truth.

"What guy? What _things_?"

"Careful what you say, Detective," Finch says. "We can look after you, but these men..." Finch stands to more forcefully address the Fusco in his imagination. "...are looking for our friend." It's Finch who's in danger of being exposed here, he's the one being discussed, but he's only worried about Reese.

"Look, it doesn't make a difference who the guy is. All you need to know is that a cop's life was on the line, and I was trying to save him."

The guy holding him gets a call. He answers, annoyed. "Yeah... I got a problem. I couldn't get the file." Oh no. He looks over at completely confused Fusco. "Some idiot destroyed it. But whoever the rat is, I got word he just made a phone call from your location."

"What do you mean, somebody made a call?" It's Vargas on the other end of the line. Reese and crew are still standing around in the warehouse. "That's impossible."

"I've got to take care of a situation. I'll call you back later."

"You're the informant!" Lionel says, finally making the obvious connection and promptly getting his lights punched out. Add one to the concussion count for Fusco.

Finch listens as Lionel's head falls with a whump against the window glass. His shoulders fall too, and he blinks in surrogate fear.

Now we're back in Reservoir Dogs hell with John. Vargas goes over to Blondie, now limp and still, and searches him. Nothing. "Where's his phone?" The men look around at each other. "Whole lot easier for me to search you after I shoot you."

John decides to try the forward approach. "He took it." He points right over at Cahill, the man he's trying hard to keep alive.

"You kidding?" He can't believe it. "The hell I did!" He starts fighting with Reese, a quick shoving match that John resolves by just throwing him over onto the couch. He's on top of him in a second and slips his phone out. "Get off me!" Now he's done, he will. 

"Shouldn't be too hard to find out." Vargas dials Blondie's number. And it rings... in John's pocket. Oh, John, you self-sacrificing idiot. Vargas turns his lunatic eyes up at him like a hungry animal. He searches him over, and pulls the phone from the inside pocket. 

John smiles with one side of his face. That face is then in a lot of pain when the bearded man knocks him in the back with a crowbar. How is his spine still in place? Add one to John's concussion count too. He falls to the concrete unconscious.

When he wakes, the guy who hit him with the crowbar is giving him the knuckled once over. He coughs, his head hung low, bleeding from several cuts and abrasions on his face.

"You tell the cops about LOS?" Vargas says, right up in his face. "Huh? The delivery?" It's cold. You can see the man's breath.

John looks up at him, struggling a bit to speak. "You shouldn't waste time. My reinforcements will be here any minute." 

Vargas hits him as hard as he can. "If that were true, I would have gotten a call from my guy and you'd be dead."

"We're not getting anywhere," Cahill says. He picks up the crowbar off the ground. "Give me time alone, I'll get him to talk."

"You better get him to talk, or you both catch a bullet." Cahill hits Reese in the stomach with the bar to show he's serious. John groans and doubles over.

When they're alone, Cahill leans in. "Who the hell are you? I know you're not a cop."

"No. But I've been undercover. I know the only thing you want in the world is to go home to your wife Melinda, to your son Danny." John uses information as a tool. This job allows him that. It gets him close, it gives him options. It certainly gets Cahill's attention.

"Hey," he grabs John by the collar, pulls his sweaty head up. "Let's get one thing straight. You don't know me." 

John just keeps going, watching him with those shining eyes all the while. "I know your handler's name is Byrne. I know you've been on the force since 2003. I know you had a younger brother Connor who OD'd a month after you graduated high school." 

Cahill's jaw drops open. "How did you..."

"That's why you're so committed to catching LOS." John lets his head drop again as Cahill stands a little straighter.

"What, are you a... Fed or something?"

"Something." The best thing, just one without a name. "I can help you escape. Help you get home."

"If you know me so well, then you know I won't go home. Not while LOS is still operating."

"Your cover is gonna be blown. You stay, you risk everything." He looks up at him, his words visible as fleeting white puffs in the cold. "Your life. Your family."

"Can you get a... a message to my wife? Tell her... I love her."

"We'll find a way to get you home," John whispers. "And you can tell her yourself."

Cahill fights back some tears, leans in. "The exchange is at the scrapyard."

But there's no time for more left. "He's coming." 

Cahill punches John in the gut for all he's worth and picks the bar up off the ground again. 

"He say anything yet?" Vargas asks as he strolls up, hands in his pockets.

"I need more time."

"Okay, there's no more time." He cocks his gun. "Ajax is dead. We've gotta dump the bodies."

"No, no, let me do it." He points to John. "I want to see the look on his face as I end this rat." 

John looks up slowly at them. "Help yourself," Vargas says and he hands over the pistol.

Cahill fires and John rocks with the impact and slumps still.

And it's 2008 again. Kara's angry that John would be so stupid as to still have feelings not yet burned to ash inside his soul. "What's the play here, John? You gonna kill this guy? Dissolve his body in a bathtub full of acid? Or are you just scratching an itch?" She sits next to him where the man just was.

"His name is Peter. He's 37, makes $175,000 a year. Is he a good guy or a serial killer? I don't know." Not either of those. "But either way, he'll take better care of her than you could." She should just shoot John here, it would be less painful for him. 

"This is why I worried about bringing you back. See, you look like the rest of these people... but you're not like them anymore, are you?" Yes, he still is and will always be. John was bent by Kara and Mark and made to do monstrous things, but he is not a monster. He's just a man, scared and sad and lonely. "If they knew what you'd done... you're barely even the same species." Projection is all that sociopaths are capable of, because it takes empathy to even understand that empathy exists at all. 

"We're walking in the dark. I've heard this speech before." John looks like he's going to throw up. Don't worry, love, you won't be in the dark forever. There is the light of knowledge and acceptance and care and connection waiting for you. It's coming. 

Oh, god, Peter's back. "Hey, uh... Sorry, I didn't realize you were meeting someone as well."

"Honey..." Kara says, smiling sweetly. "You didn't tell him about your much-better half?" She is half of him like a stab wound is half of a person. John smiles, grimly pretending along. "There will be hell to pay later." Hell is already here. "We should get going."

"Wait, two seconds. Um, I really want you to meet my wife. She's going to get a kick out of meeting someone from Puyallup." Is that really where John is from, where he met Jessica? Or was that just the game to get close? Peter runs away to grab her.

"I get it," Kara says. "Believe me. First time I rotated back, I went straight home to my family. I sat outside in the rental car for three hours, just... watching. And I realized I could tell them everything that I'd seen, everything that I'd done, and they wouldn't understand a single word." John just stares at her. "This isn't some speech. We're not..." she smiles, nodding at her own fanciful language, "walking in the dark. We are the dark." 

Poor sweet John. He still feels his humanity inside him, his decency and goodness. And Kara never stops telling him it's dead and if it's not he needs to kill it now.

And there's the sound of Jessica's voice in person, oh god. "Oh, Peter. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm late."

"It's time to go, John." It takes him a moment to move. Kara leaves first and he sits at the bar, bleeding out from a hole in his heart.

"There's a couple at the bar I want you to meet," Peter says. 

Would John meeting them both here have made a difference in what happened to Jessica? Almost certainly not. But there he was and there she was. There was a moment, a chance. And here John chose to let it go.

By the time Peter leads Jessica over to the bar, John is gone, surrendering himself to the darkness to try to keep her in the light. He will fail at both.

Present day, John's heart is still broken, but now maybe also his back as he's dumped into the trunk of a car with Blondie, now dead or close enough. Cahill leans over him once he's in, tucks a little maglite into his pocket.

"What's the holdup?" Vargas asks.

"He'll be harder to ID without this." Cahill holds up a wallet. Vargas takes it, can't believe he has to work with these idiots. 

"Car will burn hot enough. Won't be anything left to ID." He has his men punch out the back glass, douse the car in gasoline, and set it ablaze. Cahill at least makes sure the inside of the car burns first, giving John some kind of chance, although we see him in the closed trunk and he looks still unconscious.

A few minutes pass and the Machine watches the car go up in a full conflagration. John should be cooked in there.

He coughs himself awake and immediately has to pull himself free of his wrist ties. The flashlight Cahill gave him he flicks on, looking desperately to find a way out of this oven. It takes him a while and the use of a small blade, but he jimmies the lock open and he tumbles onto the ground, coughing and sputtering. 

Carter walks up, 100% casual. Apparently watching a bruised and bloodied man barely escape a flaming car trunk is every day for her. Or she accepts this kind of thing is every day for John at least. "Need a lift? I was in the neighborhood."

John struggles to his feet. "My lucky day." I guess. She really came in time for nothing but a taxi ride. 

"Your version of a lucky day is being shot and lit on fire." 

"Not shot, just grazed. Lucky for me, Cahill is an excellent marksman." Chock another one on the John gets shot tally.

Carter's phone rings, but one look at it lets her know, "It's for you."

Finch doesn't waste any time when Reese flips the phone open. "Where's Cahill?"

"Oh, I'm... fine, Finch. Thanks for asking." Well, he would have asked but if John was really hurt, Carter would have answered, and Harold's listening all the time anyway. He knows John's okay, at least for now, and he can deal with his injuries later. They'll clearly heal, but Cahill may be dead already. 

Carter's amused. "Cahill went to the exchange with LOS. Without backup."

"Where?"

"South Brooklyn scrapyard. Headed there now." He pulls the phone away to address Carter. "You got any firearms besides that piece?"

"Yeah." She opens the trunk and a case inside to reveal a selection of four different pistols, all ready to be pulled out and used.

John's impressed. "Ohh. Girl after my own heart." 

"Mr. Reese? We have one other problem. Vargas' informant has Detective Fusco. And his life is most certainly in danger. Mr. Reese..." Finch's voice tenses to a quavering thread. "I'm not sure we have time to save them both."

The innocent man takes priority. It's the meeting at the scrapyard. Vargas and Cahill are waiting when an SUV rolls up. A very businessy looking guy in a fancy suit steps out of the car with his guards. 

" _This_ is LOS?" Cahill can't believe it. He expected... more.

LOS isn't pleased after he walks up to Vargas. "You made a mess out of this." He nods and a man leaves a bag full of bundles of hundreds in the back of the SUV and starts pulling the rice bags out to take. "Next time, don't keep me waiting."

He goes to leave, but Cahill walks up behind him and puts a gun to his head, taking him hostage. It's hard to say what exactly his plan is here. Everybody has their guns out at him.

"Stay back or I spill your boss' brains out on the asphalt!"

LOS is awfully relaxed for a hostage. "Know who you're threatening?" Cahill doesn't answer, looks around. It's clear he has basically no plan whatsoever. "Where's your backup, son?"

And... he backs directly into Vargas, who puts a gun to his head. Well, that was a whole lot of nothing.

"Let him go."

"You're going to have to shoot."

And maybe he would have, but Vargas drops to the ground shot along with one of his men. Reese and Carter are here to pick off all the criminals like it's a shooting gallery. Joss and John have no cover whatsoever, but apparently the plot armor is strong or these bad guys went to the Imperial Academy of Marksmanship, because every shot fired their way misses. LOS gets an elbow in on Cahill and he slithers away. He's about to take a pistol off the ground, but John's foot is there first to cover it.

"I wouldn't do that."

Carter kicks guns away and holds the wounded. "Stay down. Don't nobody move." They're not getting up. Best they can do is writhe.

Cahill's back up, and he's got his pistol out at LOS. "On the ground!"

"You gonna arrest me? I'll be out in 14 hours. Then I'm coming for you." Fourteen hours is a very specific number. He starts advancing with a smug look on his face, but John just knocks him out cold from behind.

Cahill shouts down at the motionless body. "Threatening a police officer. I'll add that to the charges."

But John's got bad news. "There won't be any charges. At least none that stick." He nods his head down at the man. "He's CIA."

"What? The CIA's trafficking drugs?"

"The government couldn't win the war on drugs... so they're using it to fund the war on terror." Which they also can't win so they're using that to fund politicians' reelection campaigns. It's like an Aristocrats joke, but it just ends with "America!"

"This is common knowledge?"

"Doubtful. The company's built on secrets." 

Poor Cahill. "I risked my life for this." He decides he doesn't care. "I'm taking him in."

"You do and the company will ruin your career. And that's if you're lucky."

Cahill shrugs. "I'm taking him in."

"I always liked to push my luck too." He watches Cahill drag the guy off. He told him the truth, he tried to help. It's his decision, ultimately.

Night falls, and we're in the woods somewhere. Fusco and the cop holding him captive step through the dead leaves. Lionel's got a gun to his head.

"Do you know why I'm so good at my job, Fusco? I can tell a dirty cop when I see one." Fusco's so tired of being a dirty cop, but his hands can never really be clean. It won't be for long now anyway, he thinks.

"You should try looking in the mirror."

"You know, you may think you've gone clean, found God, Buddha, or some African shaman..." No, he just found someone who believed he could help them do good in the world. And they were right. "...but at the end of the day, your hands are still dirty. Always will be."

They stop. "You hear that?"

There's just crickets. "I don't hear nothing."

"That's right. No sirens, no bullhorns. No one's coming to save you." _In the end, we're all alone..._ "No one cares." He raises the gun. "That guy... the one who tells you things. He used you, then let you rot like a piece of garbage. Might as well tell me who it is. At least you'll have the satisfaction of repaying the favor."

"You think you're the first person to put a gun to my head?"

"No. But I will be the last."

"Yeah, maybe you will." Fusco is grim. "You ever been shot? Craziest things go through your mind. Glad I put on clean underwear. Hid that stash of porn. Sorry that your son had to find out his old man was a dirty cop." He stares down into the brown leaves, the dark earth. His voice wavers. "Then you realize you're gonna die. You try to go down doing something good." He finally looks up. "You wouldn't know about that, would you, you dirty sack?"

"Kneel." He hits Fusco on the shoulder, makes him drop to his knees. He gasps in pain and fear. The man cocks his gun but takes a second too long.

Because he's killed with a single shot himself from somewhere else. Lionel had his eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable, and he only opens them in surprise when he hears the body hit the soft ground.

It's John behind him, and he pulls Fusco up to his feet.

Lionel has enough of his wits left. "Cutting it kinda close, don't you think?"

"At least I'm not late." The chance to be there in time... He unlocks Fusco's handcuffs and they drop with a clatter. 

Lionel reaches down for the man's phone. "I gotta call this in. I can make this a good shooting."

"That phone is the only proof that this guy was working with Vargas?"

"Yeah."

"Let me see it." Bad move, because the instant John has it, he drops it and smashes it to bits under his heel.

"What the hell are you doing?" Fusco can't believe it.

"I can't have you coming clean, Lionel. I need you inside HR. Get close to them."

"There are cameras inside of 1PP." He's only thinking about this now? "People will know that I left with this guy. We're talking murder one. Don't you get it?"

"That's the point. You'll need your friends at HR to help you cover this up."

Poor Lionel. He can't believe it. No matter what he does, he can never stop drowning in his old mistakes. "I was just starting to enjoy being a good guy for a change."

"You've done some nice work, Lionel. I'm sorry, but you're more useful inside."

"My hands are dirty, always will be, huh?" John just turns and looks at him. His hands will never be clean either.

A while later, Finch and Reese are waiting in a car in the rain. Cahill/Tulley/whatever is bringing his wife to the car. She's in labor. Their little boy is excited. So are the expectant parents. He stops just before the car with her. 

"Honey, what is it? You okay?"

"I love you... so much."

"I know." They kiss and she holds his scruffy face.

In the car, they've been watching this all unfold. Finch finally breaks the silence, albeit softly.

"I thought you might like to know that Agent Snow has arranged the release of LOS. He'll be out in less than an hour. What do you plan to do?"

"I'll keep an eye on Cahill. Make sure he stays safe and sound."

"He's about to have a screaming infant. I doubt he will be anywhere close to _sound_."

"Poor guy." They look at each other. This is so far away from their own lives it's like watching a nature documentary.

Cahill hops in the driver's side beside his wife and heads off to whatever future awaits him.

Elsewhere, Snow and LOS stroll out clean and slick. "It's been a long time, Mark. Surprised they sent you down here for me."

"You know the agency, they always take care of their own."

"The whole deal went pear-shaped. Probably cost us 20, 30 million. First thing to take care of are those cops who brought me in. Some undercover and a female detective." Oh, female detective, you don't say. Snow's getting pretty tired of hearing about her escapades. "I gave them both fair warning. They gotta go. We gotta send a message."

They arrive at the car. 

"You're always impulsive, Ray. You can't go around killing cops. And you really shouldn't have gotten yourself arrested." The smile melts off LOS' face. "I warned you. You're behind enemy lines here." He opens the back door of the SUV. "Come on."

He's hooded the instant he steps foot in the car. It takes a second, but he's restrained. That is the last time he will ever walk free, the last time he will ever see sunlight. There's nothing of either of those things where he's going.

Snow shuts the door, feeling nothing. This is what comes to everyone when they screw up. You just better never screw up.

Fusco's walking out of the woods, disheveled and dirty. He's carrying a shovel. Simmons is there waiting. 

"Got your call. Looks like you got yourself in a little trouble."

"It was an accident." Sure.

"Most accidents don't require a shovel."

"Help me make this go away." Fusco is utterly defeated. "I'll be indebted."

"You'll be a little bit more than indebted, my friend. You belong to HR now." Part of Fusco wishes that dirty cop really would have put one through him. At least he would have died clean. He looks at the man who will now make his life a cruel misery and nods. There isn't any other choice.


	17. POI 1x16 - Risk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finch and Reese save an overconfident banker from a plot much larger than meets the eye, and we take a trip to meet Reese's old street family from when he was homeless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will certainly notice some... editorializing on my part toward the toxic masculinity nonsense that is everything to do with this episode's stock broker number and the finance industry he works in. Not sorry, just an FYI.

### POI 1x16 - Risk

  * #### Landmarks

    * John's first time as John Rooney, Assets
    * Elias is behind the plot, gathering power and wealth
    * Finch hears John tell his homeless mother figure that "someone new" is looking after him now and is touched by it



* * *

We start in darkness in the library. John looks down. "What's wrong with my other suits?"

"They're fine for a hired assassin, Mr. Reese," Finch says from the ground where he's kneeling. His eyes are on his work, taking John's measurements with the measuring tape draped around his neck. "Just not for this particular job." The man likes bespoke clothing, it makes sense he'd learn how to tailor.

He stands up and tugs at John's sleeves, checking the fit.

"Where am I going?"

"To mingle with the best and brightest. Wall Street." Harold steps back to take in the whole picture. He doesn't look at Reese's face at all, just his body and how his clothes cling to it and hang around it. He's utterly adorable himself in his purple vest and dangling yellow measuring tape. "We have a new number." 

Finally he looks up and reaches for the photo taped to the glass. "Mr. Adam Saunders. He's a prop trader at the investment firm of Baylor Zimm."

"Prop trader?"

"Proprietary. He invests the bank's own money, not the clients'. He seems to be your typical overeducated, overcompensated Wall Street high flyer." 

Finch gets back down by Reese's hems. He reaches under John's pant legs, tugs and unrolls them. 

John protests. "They're fine."

"No... the cuff should _shiver_ on the shoe, not break." John has no idea what to make of this. All he can do is stand here and be subjected to Finch's scrutiny and active hands.

"Saunders has already had a brush with the SEC, an accusation of insider trading, unproven." He chalks John's pant leg, marking it for mending. "So his risk taking may have led him into dangerous waters."

Harold moves back onto his knees in front of Reese, which we see from behind in an unexpectedly suggestive shot. "I want you to get close to him," Finch says as he stands, talking low, all his concentration still on John and his suit. He's looking at his chest now, the way the jacket hangs over his shoulders.

"I don't know anything about Wall Street."

"Well, here's a start..." Of course Finch has a book ready. Books are the solution to all of life's problems. This particular one is _A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing_. "Although it doesn't really matter. Banking is mostly looking clever and wearing the right clothes. And we've managed the second part," he says, upbeat through the implied insult.

The Machine is reviewing SEC files. Someone's on audio elsewhere saying Saunders has seen too much. She's already three steps ahead of our boys. If only she could actually communicate with them in a way that wasn't nine digits.

It's a trading office, monitors everywhere with lines of numbers, black and white, red and green, lines and graphs and charts.

"I'm a prop trader, not a tour guide," our number complains to another asshole in a suit. 

"This guy's a _whale_. He brings us business. It's... millions." And it's a drop in Finch's bucket.

"And that'd be great, if I handled clients, but the only people I make money for are Baylor and Zimm."

"The amount of bank this guy's talking, it'll bleed into ours soon enough."

"Sydney know about this?"

"Sydney requested you by name. Someone must think you know what you're doing."

Saunders stops them. "You're backing me into a corner on this, Paul! I've got my eye on a thing."

"Hey, what are friends for? Besides, you don't even have to meet the whale, just his rep, some asset manager." I suppose you could call him that.

"Outstanding. I'll be spending two days with hair gel and a pinstriped suit."

"It's glen check, actually." Oops, it's John, looking appropriately sharp as glass in his new Finch tailored (? At least measured) business suit and tie. Had to look up glen check, it's a type of woolen fabric with a woven twill design of small and large checks. So it's a slick comeback to go with his slicked hair. Saunders got the hair gel right at least. "John Rooney. Assets." John always looks restrained in a buttoned collar, like it's holding him in. 

"Adam Saunders." He turns to his buddy Paul. "I know what I'm doing." He smiles to John, who he is now forced to schmooze.

"My client prefers to stay anonymous." He sure as hell does. "He's the, uh, silent type."

He'd like to be anything but silent at the moment. Harold looks like he'd rather be screaming, standing on a rooftop with a brown leather case of something. It's a long way down even to the roof of the next building over. 

"He's also not fond of heights." Finch kneels carefully to dig in the bag. At least he feels a little safer with a lower center of gravity. "I thought rooftops were your domain, Mr. Reese."

But John's on the job now. "Your reputation precedes you. My client trusts reputations when it comes to his money."

"Reputations can be deceiving. How much are we talking about?"

"At first? Pocket change." He hands over a piece of paper. Some pocket change. The total at the bottom is $153 million. How much money does Finch actually have? Saunders' eyebrows go up into his hairline. "My client likes to roll the dice. No tips, no I-bonds, no short-term funds. Play jazz. Consider it an audition, Mr. Saunders. It starts now."

Finch is impressed by the spiel. "You're a quick study, Mr. Reese."

Some other suit yells over. "Adam, get over here, they're reading." Everybody wanders over to the TV. It's a jury verdict on the Robert Keller murder trial. We know that story. Finch found justice for his long lost number and took all of that despicable man's money, the only thing he ever cared about. This $153 million may be some of that loot. Harold did say then he'd never need to invest in anything ever again.

Adam wants to know if John's been following the trial, if he knows about Keller. "I'm familiar with the case." Yeah, he almost got killed in that guy's lab and ended up poisoning a man to death there instead. He's aware of it.

"Only thing between this company and Chapter 11 is an acquittal." And if it's an acquittal, John and Finch will be all over this guy again. There has to be justice for the people this man flippantly killed and they would be determined to get it.

"Ever the pessimist, Saunders," says another of these identical bros. 

"Nothing breeds like bad news, even on the brokers' side, right, Vic?"

Everyone here is so white and so male and so smug. "Bad news is already priced in. Keller's son-in-law is steering the ship, it's a blue chip at a bargain-basement price." It's bargain basement now because Finch shorted the hell out of it earlier. It's $14.26 now, apparently. "Smart money's already in, pal." No, smart money already crushed this company to dust. "That's why I get to handle the big bucks around here. You just went pro too early." John looks like he'd like to bomb this building from space as much as I would.

"Way too early." The only woman that exists in this boys' club world appears.

"That's Sydney Baylor, a partner in the firm," Finch says over the line. "She also has a reputation."

Luckily everyone's watching TV, so they can talk a little. "Reputation for what?"

"Everything..." And of course the only woman here is considered a ravenous sex bitch.

"You held the sell tickets on Virtanen to the last minute so I wouldn't see. $100 million shorted, Adam?!" Like, you guys do realize you still have this whale client guy you're supposed to be schmoozing. I guess not, because instead it's all insults and dirty laundry. Their company is grotesque and we haven't even gotten into the actual case yet.

"You said you wanted playmakers around here." Every single thing they say is more obnoxious than the last.

"Wait, you short sold Virtanen? Are you out of your mind?" Well, not really considering Virtanen's CEO is a MURDERER AND THEIR DRUGS KILL PEOPLE. 

"It's guilty, their stock craters, and I hold the price that I sold for." Yeah, this was a lot more impressive when Finch did it without any trial or news coverage, just directly to the monster's face. "See, that's the smart money, Victor," Adam says, pointing his finger at Victor's chest. Jesus, these guys. Would you just blow each other or kill each other and just get it over with? "Let. It. Ride." Seriously, I'm just going to have to ask you to put this guy out of our misery, John. 

"All right, kid. But consider what you're betting." Kid? UGH. I'm honestly trying not to die at every line, but it's a lost cause.

The verdict comes in and it's guilty of course, because hell yes that man is guilty, John and Harold uncovered that a while ago. And they got justice for a murdered innocent woman out of it, not just some goddamned profit (although also that).

There's lots of cheering and whooping. Didn't these other dudes have Virtanen held long, so this is a disaster for them? Whatever, smug guy is extra smug now. Boss lady gives the "good job, never do it again" speech.

"Feel like having a drink over the grave of Virtanen pharmaceuticals?" Mr. Rooney here is one of the men who put them in that grave.

"Why not?" John looks really annoyed to have to babysit this guy, but this is his job. Or his life. Or whatever this thing he has with Harold is.

"I'll round up some guys." Oh, good, more tools, only now they'll be drunk as well as coked up. Hooray. "Meet you downstairs after the closing bell." Yeah, sure. John bluejacks his phone for good measure. Or he tries, but it fails. He walks out and reports in. This can't be good.

"His phone didn't pair, Finch. That ever happen before?"

Finch, still on the roof, doesn't like this development either. "All I can think is that somebody else already bluejacked him. It appears we're not the only ones looking into Adam Saunders." So bluejacking is first come, first served apparently?

"I see why. Guy plays poker with other people's money and gloats about it."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that..." Finch uses some huge range finder monocular thing to peer at a suited man on another roof. It's Adam, hanging out by the edge. "Someone like that, the win doesn't concern him. It's the rush." And this is why our entire financialized world is falling to pieces.

It's night now, and Mr. Adrenaline is driving John at a hundred miles an hour down Manhattan streets, bouncing his sports car on the uneven pavement. John's a cool, even guy, and he's been in plenty of intense driving situations. But never when he trusted a driver this little. Again, our smug number could physically not be more smug. John, you do realize if he kills you both in a car accident you haven't exactly done your job?

"Virtanen," he says instead. "Two vultures, one stone. How did you know?"

"I read everything. All the 10K financials nobody else bothered to." Yeah, good for you. Could you have done your being smarter routine without all the assholery, though? Adam blathers on about how he dug into the company, saw they were broke, yadda yadda. "That ship was going down, so I took the bet."

John laughs as his equally gross assets character. "No risk, no reward."

"You ever play Russian roulette?" Here's the thing. PROBABLY, AND FOR REAL. Adam is playing tiddlywinks and he thinks it's real danger. John just looks over at him. "You want to get in the game, you got to spin the cylinder." I feel so sorry for John that he's trapped with this man for the foreseeable future.

And we're in the club, just like every club on TV. They're having bottle service at some table and couches setup. John's leaned back, the tie loosened on his new fancy suit.

Elsewhere, Finch is busy. John checks in. "You in his apartment yet, Finch?"

"The rent on this place must be staggering. Maybe that's why he doesn't have any furniture." Finch in his trenchcoat investigator getup is pretty adorable too. He makes a find in the bottom of the closet. "Mr. Reese, there's a small fortune in Saunders' closet." A small fortune in stacks of shoeboxes filled with cash.

At the club, the check comes. This asshole signs his name to a $12,975.95 check for a couple hours of couch use and a few bottles of booze. 

"For a banker, he doesn't seem to trust banks," Finch says. He is sitting with the boxes now and has one open on his lap. "Bundles of $200 each." The boxes go back into their pile in the closet. 

They're still hanging out at the club. John notices Adam's order is a club soda. "You pay, but you don't drink."

"I drink, just... not right now."

His bro friend Vic has some point to make. "Adam here prefers to keep his wits about him at all times." John liked to do that too, but Kara taught him he had to loosen up and blend in. "I hate that. How was the dime tour? Was our proprietary friend here worth the reputation?"

"Every penny," John says. Every penny of the dime.

"There he is, Mr. Big Shot." Vic is drunk as hell. "You know how many clients I had to apologize to today when they found out I put them in a stock you shorted?" _You're supposed to keep that screwing of the clients on the downlow, Adam, don't you know that?_

Adam gets up and they have a little of a back and forth while John watches, increasingly concerned these drunk morons are going to get into it. He's not wrong. Adam ratchets up the problems by pushing Vic's buttons. "I guess you just went pro too early," he says and pats Vic's cheek in the most condescending manner possible.

Vic reacts in the only way this interaction was ever going to end, by swinging a punch. It knocks Adam for just a second, but then he returns the blow. Vic in his stupor stumbles backwards and other suited morons catch him. And start piling onto Adam. Yeah, bad move, because now they've roused John from his seat on the couch. If he gets involved in your fight, it's going to end, and you're not going to like it.

With barely any effort at all he headbutts the guy holding Adam and he falls back, lost. The sudden escalation of violence causes a few cries and shouts, but John is only finishing this fight, he didn't start it. Reese grabs Adam by the arm and drags him out. "Let's go." Enough. This idiot is hard enough to protect from himself, let alone all these other tools. 

I don't know when or where John is free enough to send in this dispatch, but he pipes in through the line. "Hey, Finch. We've got a Wall Street trader that gambles millions by day, fights in bars at night..."

"And someone's tracking him." _Other than us, I mean._ "Stay on him tonight. If somebody goes after him, it'll likely happen at his home." Which Reese is monitoring through his high powered zoom lens. Adam is milling about inside. 

"Yeah. Problem is, he isn't going home." Oops, this isn't his apartment at all, it's Sydney's. She's got glasses and he's got champagne. "Looks like he's working overtime." John pulls down his camera. This just keeps getting messier. "Adam is closer to his boss than we thought, Finch," he says as they kiss in the shadowed light of the apartment, half in silhouette. "Who is this guy?" 

In the morning light, Finch reports in. "Adam never came home last night. Since I was there, I took the liberty of copying some of his personal records." He takes the liberty of pretty much everything. John is outside Sydney's place still. Inside she and Adam are having breakfast. "Filled in some of the gaps, not all." Finch is back at the library with all of his tools. "I do have a death certificate for Saunders' mother from when he was nine. Guardianship papers signed by a Robert Sowoski from three years later." 

"No father in the picture?" Does this actually matter for a grown man? We know it will in this particular case, but... 

"I guess not." We look down on Finch from above. His jacket looks soft, almost felt. You can see the stitching, it's clearly bespoke, handmade. I want to touch it. "I pulled up his employment contract from his personal computer. Sydney Baylor hired him herself. Their private relationship may account for his speedy rise to a trading desk." They're making out even now as John watches.

"This looks like a little more than sleeping your way to the top, Finch." Does it, though? Maybe he's just got good morning after bedside manner?

"No other smudges on his record... except for a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that involved him six months ago." Yeah, except THAT. "I don't know why."

"Maybe Detective Carter could help." 

"We'll see..." Finch is still busy reading, learning, thinking, processing. "Until then, I've taken care of the current surveillance on Adam." There's a process on his screen. It runs and completes. "After a GPRS reroute, no one will be listening to his calls." Well, except them, of course. They count as no one for a variety of reasons. "If someone makes another attempt on his phone, they'll have to get close."

"And we'll nail them." Reese is ready for some punching. 

At the police station, a delivery man from Westside Dry Cleaning asks for Joss Carter by name. 

"I didn't have any dry cleaning."

"Well, got your name on it here, so..." She doesn't like the sound of that. "What is it?"

"One... man's suit." 

Oh, right. Of course. This guy just never stops. She agrees to take it as the Machine watches. 

Finally Carter gets the receipt, the only thing this delivery really intended. In sharp print it says: 

3 World Financial Center  
Take a cab

Well, she had actual plans today, but Carter guesses now she has whatever this quagmire is instead. Whatever it is, it's going to be complicated and probably dangerous. If John is involved, it always is. She hops in a cab outside and gives the address.

"John's going to want that suit back," Finch says from the driver's seat. She looks up to see his eyes watching her in the rear view mirror. She can just see his cheek rise with his smile. This guy too, she thinks. How did she end up with these weirdos?

She looks up to see the driver's posted ID. "So where's Mr. Navaad?"

Finch turns around as best he can to talk to her face to face. "He's taking his family to a Knicks game while I borrow his taxi." He hands her back Adam's business card from Baylor and Zimm.

"Adam Saunders? Is he in trouble?" Nah, Harold just set you up on a blind date, Joss.

"He might be. He needs our help, Detective Carter, and I need yours."

"Is that why we're going to 3 World Financial Center?"

"No, that's the regional offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We need to get a look at sealed SEC records pertaining to Mr. Saunders." 

Carter laughs with a scoff. _Of course you do._ "And you think I can just do that?"

He turns toward her again, the seat squeaking as he leans. "If anyone can do it, you can."

Deserved flattery is the right move. She sighs. "All right. I'll see what I can do." 

Finch looks pretty satisfied. He says he's not good with people, but he's very effective with them in a lot of ways. He presses a button and a screen pops up: $3.00.

"You turned on the meter?"

"Don't forget to tip," he says. _This guy._

Elsewhere, John finally gets a bluejack going on Adam's phone just in time to hear an SEC investigator stroll up to Adam at a coffee cart to hassle him about his triple espresso. Adam reminds him their investigation ended six months ago.

Investigator's having none of that. "And I can't let another Ivy League punk like yourself get away with it." Adam refuses to talk. "You're always very good at keeping your mouth shut." Adam tries to leave, but the investigator blocks his way. Now Reese is getting nervous watching.

"Is this the new procedure now, harassment in broad daylight?"

"A year from now, I'm still gonna be looking. One slip, so much as give your grandma a stock tip, I'm gonna get you, kid." Everyone calls him kid. He's not that babyfaced.

"The SEC is a watchdog without teeth. You couldn't give a parking ticket."

"Good thing I got friends in the Justice Department. They _love_ sending rich white boys up to Otisville. Watch your step."

Finch calls in from behind the cracked glass. He has new photos with scotch tape to post. "Carter sent over the sealed SEC files." How'd she end up getting them? That seemed remarkably easy and fast. "Inspector Doug Rasmussen pursued possible counts of insider trading at Baylor Zimm last year. The inquiry was aimed at top tier executives. Adam was a subpoenaed witness, but all charges were dropped. He testified to knowing of _zero_ wrongdoing of the upper management of the firm." Finch speaks with his hand, swiping it out for zero. "I believe he was lying to protect his boss, Sydney Baylor."

A little while later, he calls in again. "What's Adam up to now?"

"Headed all the way out to Queens. Looks like he's got a bone to pick with a guy in a food truck."

Adam walks up to the truck and threatens to call the Department of Health. The food truck guy doesn't seem very worried, although John does, listening in. "You know, I don't see what the problem is, 'cause now you can stuff that soft gut of yours into your $2000 suit."

"$3000 suit."

"$3000? For a suit?" They both laugh. Food truck man loves it, loves him. And John loves them together. Affection always affects him.

"The food truck is registered to Robert Sowoski," Finch says, which they would have known if John had just looked at the truck for a second. The man's name is all over the menu and the sides. 

"The legal guardian?" 

Finch pulls up a picture of little Adam. But too little. Didn't they say his mom died when he was nine and this guy picked up guardianship three years later when he was twelve? Anyway, it's a cute pic and does its job in that sense even if it's lacking in others. Harold flicks through some others through the years, eventually some with Mr. Food Truck, then notices something a little more troubling. "He's more than a guardian. He's also a Baylor Zimm client."

As the man prepares sausage and peppers, they talk about some weirdo investment Adam made for Robert that Robert doesn't and can't understand. Something called Tritak. He's worried because Adam keeps putting more of his nest egg in this Tritak.

"Even a financial dunce like me knows you gotta diversify, right?"

"Uncle Bob, would I steer you wrong? Who got you those tax breaks? Who got you that low interest loan. You had one truck..."

"Now I got six trucks. 20 employees." Mo money mo problems for Mr. Food Truck. He gives in and says he trusts Adam. "You're a genius. Always have been."

"What do we know about Tritak Energy, Finch?" _We_ , meaning _you_.

"Not much. Stay close to Adam, see what you can find out. On a side note, Saunders guided me to a very kind broker who happily deposited our money in Baylor Zimm." _Our_ money. Always in the plural together. He's looking at his investor profile on his screen. Harold Crane is in for that $153 million. He's relaxed about the whole thing. John is capable of extraordinary physical feats, but Harold is capable of extraordinary financial ones.

"Hope you got a receipt, Finch." Finch just nods, smiling silently in the library.

John shows up to Adam's brokerage in his "Rooney, assets" form, although he's abandoned the expensive tie Finch got for him. He's much more himself and comfortable with his collar undone. He gives some excuse about finalizing a deposit.

But Adam is all squirrelly and runs away to catch that guy Paul. He's got Tritak questions.

"You made a $100 million yesterday in the short of the century..." No, that was Finch, months ago. This is just the leftovers. "...and you're asking me about some MLP? Who cares?" Paul replies.

"It's my uncle's cash. I care."

Paul says all the fixed income investors like that are getting put in MLPs. "It's safe. Boring." 

But Adam's noticed something and it's making him worried. "But it's not just my uncle, it's half the clients at this firm. And it's half the firm. I ran the numbers last week. Baylor Zimm is invested in this thing to 19%. Anybody even tracking that?"

Oh, Paul doesn't like where this is going. He grabs Adam by the arm and pulls him to the side. John's watching this whole exchange. Lucky for him, everybody just acts like he's a cardboard standee incapable of noticing bad signs around him.

"You've been looking into client money? You know you can't do that, right? Like _federally_ , you can't. It's illegal. And so is this conversation!"

"Thanks for the tip." Adam wanted answers, not a scolding.

"Hey. What are friends for?" There are no friends in this building.

Sydney shows up after Paul leaves. "What's this I hear about you getting questioned by the SEC today?" The SEC is after him and Adam immediately goes poking his nose where he's not supposed to and blabbing about it.

"It's the same guy. New day, same song. But... I need to talk to you." He brings up Tritak again, which they'd been talking about the night before.

"How about we keep what we talk about at night, at night?" She's still really worried about the SEC. "We can't take another embarrassment."

"You mean the firm can't take another embarrassment, right?"

"Keep your head down, Adam. Please." Does anyone remember John even exists?

Night has fallen by the time we see Adam and John finally talking, driving balls at a night range on top of a building. They're both in their white dress shirts and white golf gloves. 

"I come here a lot when I need to decompress," Adam says. "It's peaceful."

John is tired of dancing around the issue. "So what were you arguing about at the office today?"

"That isn't anything your client needs to worry about."

They both get ready for another shot, but John looks up before his swing. "Is the SEC something my client needs to be worried about?"

"In this business, someone's always trying to find the trick, the con."

"Right... So what's yours?"

"We're just that good." UH HUH.

Hahahaha, that's literally exactly what Reese says too. "Uh huh. Is that why you invested your uncle's money with the firm?"

Oh, Adam doesn't like that at all. He turns around. "Excuse me?"

John is solid. "We have $150 million on the line. We'd like to know everything, Adam." Reese strolls up toward him, using his club more as a walking stick. "Saunders is your given name, right? But wouldn't Sowoski be more accurate?"

Adam steps closer. His voice is unsteady. "Are you having me followed?" No, he's doing the following himself, thank you. John just looks at him flatly. "All right, let's go. I'm driving you back to BZ, and if they still want your money, some other schmuck can handle it," he says, pointing his finger.

John tracks him as he goes. Well, that went well.

In the car, Adam's driving like a lunatic, still yelling. "So we're clear, my family, my past is _none_ of your business. No matter _how_ much money is at stake."

"Right..." John says, distracted. He's noticed something off outside.

"You know, maybe I should call the police."

"You may need to."

"What are you talking about?"

John turns around to look out the back. "You see the construction equipment back there?"

"Yeah, I see it. So what?"

"You see any workers with it?" Uh, oh.

But then they do see one, a lone guy with a flag. "What do you mean? They want me to slow down."

"We're being funnelled. Don't stop!" John grabs the wheel to the right and forcibly pushes down Adam's knee to floor the accelerator. He gets them out of the way just in time as a giant dump truck plows through where they just were and crushes some other cars off to the side. 

Adam skids to a sideways stop and John is out of the car barely before it stops moving. The truck is empty when he reaches it. The flag the fake construction worker had been waving lies abandoned on the ground. 

"Someone just tried to kill Adam, Finch."

The next day, they're reviewing traffic cam footage. "How's Mr. Saunders after last night?" There is always such care and concern in Harold's voice for their numbers.

"He thinks it was an accident."

Finch looks up at him. "And you're sure it wasn't?"

"It's called funnelling. You force your target into a kill zone by subtly shifting his direction. Carter's looking at the scene now." We see her, tracing down the truck's VIN number. "The vehicles, the stop light, it was professional. But who wants Adam dead enough to bring in a hit team?"

Finch limps over to his desk. It sits in the middle of the room, with a large covered window behind allowing light in. There's a large fixture above hanging, old art deco. Behind him, as always and ever, is the list. The saved and the lost. 

"I've been watching my money. The majority of it is being shuffled into one company. Tritak, same one that Adam's uncle mentioned, only at _ten times_ the rate that his money was invested. Someone is moving faster than before."

"Tritak invests in the Louisiana/Texas pipeline running gas to the northeast."

"People need natural gas, so for the most part, Tritak should keep a steady price." He keeps his eyes on the screen, but his hands move as he thinks, seeing the numbers in his head. "But it shot up _600%_ recently because of a buy frenzy initiated at Baylor Zimm."

"Insider trading?"

Finch turns and leans back to look up at him with his limited motion. "Happened before. Adam knew about it then, maybe he knows about it now."

"Except he won't walk away this time."

John goes to the file cabinet, pulls out a pistol. Even at a distance, you can see the furrow of concern appear between Finch's eyes.

"We were almost roadkill last night," he says, and he noisily pops a clip in. "I'm getting tired of playing around." Add one to the cocking a gun in the library for no reason count.

Finch has less invasive ways of getting what they need. He's out in the snow with Uncle Bob in front of the food truck and an American flag.

"Mr. Sowoski, I'm with the SEC. We're looking into possible criminal activities at Baylor Zimm investments." They both pull up seats at a little outdoor table. "We know your nephew is a trader there."

"What? Did he do something wrong?"

Finch has his fauxhawk going. There's always a little hint of his wildness left in his otherwise conservative look. He's wearing a trenchcoat over a very conservative blue suit, shirt, and tie. In his hands he has a big bunch of papers held together with a large clip. They look rifled through already. It's an effective look for a financial investigator.

"We can't be sure. Does Adam advise you on your own investments?"

"No, I got a broker for that." 

Finch just looks at him, the same look of seriousness and concern on his face. "What can you tell me about..." He shuffles through his papers, rearranges them a little for notes and pulls out a pen. "A company called Tritak Energy?" He says Tritak deliberately awkwardly, making it seem unknown, keeping his cards close.

"Not much. You'd have to... talk to my guy." 

Harold keeps his eyes fixed with the man. "But your own money is heavily invested in it, correct?"

And he cracks poor chubby, schlubby little Uncle Bob in his Carhartt jacket and fingerless gloves. "Yeah... You know I knew there was something fishy going on there. But Adam, he put me with good people. He said it was fine."

"How well do you know your nephew?" Bold question.

He takes a moment before he speaks. "When my sister died, Adam's dad left to find work out west. He ended up in New Mexico. He never came back." Finch always listens to stories like these with great silent sympathy, feeling them inside himself. "So Adam came to live with my family. Every month, his father sent $200 home. For whatever, comic books, new shoes... Adam never spent it." Finch's eyes fall a little. $200. He's seen those bundles boxed and hidden in Adam's closet. "Year after year, he saved every penny in... in shoe boxes. It was thousands. And when he grew up, he used it to enroll in night classes before he could get into a real business school." He didn't use all of it, and Finch knows that personally. "And in the end... what Adam had instead of a father was... cash in a shoe box. What'd he do? He bought himself a future." 

Adam is coming out of a subway somewhere when he's intercepted by the real SEC guy. "Saunders, we should talk... now." Adam tries to walk away but SEC man says the magic word. "Tritak." Now Adam stops and turns around. "A run of the mill MLP that just happens to be the hottest damn equity on the market these days. You tell me what you know."

As this is happening, John strolls up and sees his target is stopped so he dashes behind a pole to keep watching and listening. 

"I don't know anything."

"Oh, I bet you'll start remembering when you're up in Otisville. But by then it'll be too late to make a deal."

And Adam cracks. "Okay, okay. Alright. Look, look." John turns up his earpiece. Here we go. "I ran some numbers the other night, it looks like... It doesn't add up. There's no reason why Baylor Zimm should be dumping so much money into this one company." He lets out a heavy breath. "Unless... unless somebody knows something the rest of us don't."

SEC man is interested. "You still have the numbers you ran?" Yeah, the illegal ones, you still got those?

"On a laptop, in my office."

"Get it. _Now._ "

Adam goes upstairs to his desk. The office is busy as always, full of stuffed suits, inflated numbers, and graphs treated like gospels. He gets a text. It's Sydney the boss. "Meet Upstairs NOW" it says.

He replies "Your Office?" They all seem to like weird capitalization. She writes back. "The Roof". Oh good, someone tried to kill you last night, let's get you up on top of a building where no one can see you get pushed to your certain death.

He just misses John in the elevator. John has his game face on, all seriousness with the collar of his coat turned up.

Finch just got the texts at the library. He limps over quickly. This is bad and he knows it. There's fearful urgency when he comes over the line. "Mr. Reese, we have a problem. He's on the roof."

And yep, as soon as Adam gets to the roof, someone in a black balaclava clocks him out and starts dragging him to the edge. Nice view from this building. Behind them is the Chrysler building and the Empire State building beyond. 

Mr. Balaclava tosses the briefcase first overboard, but before he can lift Adam over, John's there to grab the man by the shoulders and drag him back. He tosses him but Balaclava efficiently rolls and gets back to his feet ready to fight. He's not bad... for about three seconds before John knees him in the gut and kicks him backwards to the ground with his heel. That's enough to give him time to grab Adam now that he's conscious enough to stand.

"We gotta get you out of here. Come on." He takes him to the elevator with his gun out and presses the button with a black leather glove. "We have to move fast. This building is tactically unsafe." No kidding.

Adam, disheveled now, tie and collar loose, sweaty, points at him. "You're not an asset manager." 

"No, but I did save your life." He gets a rolling chair and brings it to the door to the roof to wedge it shut.

"What the hell happened back there?"

"Just a second attempt to kill you." He gets up close, yanks Adam closer. "I need to know what about Tritak has people repeatedly trying to do that." 

"It- it started with my uncle. The firm invested him in a company. He asked me some questions, so I took a peek."

John's busy watching the elevator numbers move, but he rolls his eyes over for a split second. "Illegally?"

"Yeah, but he was family! I didn't think anything of it. Then I saw some numbers that I didn't agree with, so I wrote an email, I was going to send it to risk management, legal, the partners, everybody. But then, then the SEC started sneaking around, so I was told to keep my mouth shut." 

"You think it was insider trading."

"It wouldn't be the first time." Adam is still talking to the side of John's head because Reese's eyes are fixed on the numbers. They need out of this building now and this elevator is taking forever. "But look, I never sent that email."

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"A few friends at the firm. I- I asked them just to take a look at it, and–" 

Finally the bell rings. John pulls Adam over to the side with him, puts him behind him so he can be ready to shoot. Adam crouches behind him, clutching at his side.

"Who?" John asks.

Adam licks his lips. "Sydney Baylor."

The elevator is clear, so John pushes Adam inside. That's one more assassination attempt survived.

Back at the police station, Carter is looking over the pictures of the truck. She's growing her hair out. It looks nice longer. The truck's VIN number is scratched out. Someone didn't want it identified.

A uniform comes up with what she asked for. "Only one utility yard reports vehicle thefts in the last week."

"All stolen three nights ago. Backhoe, steam roller, and... a refurbished sanitation vehicle? What would somebody want with an old garbage truck?" Officer Useless just shrugs. "Thanks," she scoffs. Scoffing at fools is half of Carter's life.

It's night again and Finch checks in. "Mr. Reese? Did you find Sydney Baylor?"

"Yeah, we're at her penthouse now." His voice isn't happy because it's an ugly scene. She's dead in her bathtub, one leg up. Her head has sunk down a bit and where it's slid, there is a trail of blood. Adam stands on the other side of the room, hands fluttering, upset. "But she isn't saying much. Whoever is after Adam got to her first."

"This is my fault," Adam says, beside himself, pointing down at the pale body of his lover. "I asked her about the Tritak numbers." He sniffs and his voice shakes. "She must have looked into them herself." He crouches down next to the tub, next to her, and runs a hand over his face. He makes a sound of such grief and distress, just this side of crying. "Oh... Oh my god... They killed her."

John takes some pictures of the scene. "Adam, you recognize that bottle?"

"Yeah, we drank it the other night to celebrate the Virtanen short." 

"...Which means your fingerprints are all over it." He looks around the room. There are champagne glasses, toiletries, flowers. "Everywhere." Adam realizes what he's saying. 

Reese calls into HQ. "Finch, they killed Baylor for digging into her own company. Made it look like Adam did it before plunging to his own death." The Machine missed this murder. It was certainly planned. It's hard to believe the killers were able to manage this completely away from every single one of the ten thousand eyes and million ears. John and Adam hear sirens outside. "The cavalry's here. Time to go."

Finch is worried. "The police will be all over Adam. What are you going to do with him?"

"Take him somewhere safe. Come on." They go back downstairs, but poor Adam can't look away from the dead body of someone he cared about until he physically can't see her anymore.

Sydney's apartment is now a crime scene. CSU is talking to Carter. "Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head."

"Prints?"

"I dusted twice. None on the tub, none on the body. Only ones we found were the vic's and an Adam Saunders. We think he was having a relationship with the victim. His prints are all over the home and murder weapon."

They head upstairs. "You mean the, uh... champagne bottle."

"How'd you know that?"

_A little birdy told me._ She shrugs, smiling, playing dumb. Mr. CSU doesn't care, he just points her toward the bathroom. "Is there any chance, if Saunders was having a relationship with the vic, that he could have handled the champagne bottle, say, days ago, then had it planted?"

"That'd be pretty slick. But who'd go through the trouble? You'd have to, what, search the building's garbage? Anyway, basement's guarded."

And then it clicks. She tosses her head, smiling a bit at the revelation and the cleverness. "Unless they had a garbage truck."

Finch is calling in to try to help John hide Adam. "Mr. Reese, we have many safe houses in the city where Adam could be taken." _Many._ How many is many?

"I know." But John's chosen somewhere a little less... plush. It's a homeless encampment. John and Adam stick out like sore thumbs in their expensive and clean suits. Reese hands Adam an old raggedy blanket. "The safest I've ever been was when I was anonymous. Here. You'll be safe too." John may have been safe from the world then, but he wasn't safe from himself. 

He turns to leave, but Adam reaches for his arm. "Wait, you can't leave me here. I can't sleep here."

"Why not? I did. Right over there for four months." 

This is the first real look we've gotten into what John's life was like at his bottom, when he was lost, hopeless, and just day by day waiting for his heart to stop. 

"See that woman? Her name is Joan." She's watching them. "If you need anything, just ask her." Adam turns to look at her. She is scraggly, digging through a plastic bag. "Oh, uh, just don't touch anything in her cart." He tosses his head a little, thinking of burnt fingers when he tried to touch the stove. "Here. Don't use this phone until I call you on it."

Before he goes, Adam thinks of something. "Wait, wait, wait. Victor. Go find Victor."

"Your... pal from the nightclub?"

"He's the senior broker. If someone's putting clients in Tritak, whether or not they want it, he's the next rung down on the brokerage ladder."

Finch's fingers dance across his keyboard. He's typing as he listens to some politician making a press statement on TV. "If this bill had not passed today, it would have been put aside indefinitely, which we feel would be detrimental to the state of New York." The screen with the news chyron says "Shale Fracking Bill Passes - NY Senate Approves 11th Hour Deal". On another screen, Finch has a map of the continental US up, with pink and purple markings labeled "Lower 48 states shale plays".

John comes in, and Finch doesn't waste any time. He doesn't look away from his screens either. "We have a problem, Mr. Reese." You could make a supercut of that line.

"What else is new?" John says. Seriously. 

"Have you heard about Utica shale, or the process of fracking?" We get a good look at Finch's setup. It's a hell of a thing. Five screens visible, at different angles and heights around the desk. Some have code, some have logs, some have shell prompts. 

"It's, um, underground rock formations." 

"Companies dig down and _fracture_ shale beds to release natural gas." The picture shows the Marcellus shale. "They just passed a bill to start fracking in Upstate New York, which means... they wouldn't need a _pipeline_ up from the south."

"And they don't need to invest in a company like Tritak." John, now to Finch's side, looks down. "How much did Baylor and Zimm have invested in Tritak? Or, how much did its clients?"

"Millions." He looks at a graph, TRTK going down and down and down. "Millions upon millions. And they will lose everything. Adam saw this coming and tried to stop it."

"Which is why they tried to kill him."

"But who are they?"

As the Machine is busy doing financial calculations of her own counting TRTK's potential victims, Reese keeps thinking. "Adam told me to talk to Victor. Said he would have to know."

It's carnage at the office. Every broker is on the phone with furious clients, trying to sell shares to the no one in their right mind who will buy them.

John is way beyond messing around. He goes directly into Victor's office and just grabs the little pissant by a fistful of collar and drags him to his feet. "Hello, Victor." He puts him right in front of his face, this weak, greedy, worthless little man. "You're a patsy. They just used you. But your boss is dead, Adam's life is on the line, and millions were lost. People needed that money." He jerks Victor closer. "Families."

Victor plays dumb or really is this dumb. "I thought Tritak was a safe bet." John tosses him back into his chair. "Someone got to the senators. Someone powerful enough to push that shale fracking bill through the system."

John looks away, thinking. "But why build Tritak up? Why silence Adam... only to watch it fail?" And he's gone.

At the homeless camp, Adam finds a paper someone is using for a pillow. The Tritak business is front page news. He's immediately on the phone to Reese. He's not following the instructions about the phone. Wasn't John supposed to call him first?

"Listen, it's a short sale. Someone had the brokers pump up the price and then sold high, because they knew that the bill was going to pass and kill Tritak. Whoever shorted it stands to make millions on this." Why didn't Finch figure this shorting business out? It's the obvious way to make money out of this scenario and we've seen him use shorting for malicious intent before himself.

"That's why they targeted you," John says. "So how do we find the short-seller?"

"Look around you. There's 50 brokers selling off Tritak. We need to find the guys who already sold it days ago, because now they have to cover the short and buy it back." John's looking around the office. "I gotta go," says Adam, although it's not like he's got a lot to do at the camp.

Oh, there's what he's decided he needs to do: call his uncle. Which is exactly what John told him not to do.

"Adam, what's going on? You told me Tritak was safe."

"Bob, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll get your money back."

"It's not just my money, Adam. It's salaries, it's pensions, it's every employee that works for me." More of the echoes of the financial crash, one of the most frequent themes of this show. We are all fallout. "It's my business! The Sowoski name." Adam stammers, but Uncle Bob is crushed. "But you're not a Sowoski, at least you never thought you were. You're a Saunders. Isn't that right, Adam?" Ouch. 

"Listen, listen! I'll get it back. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I will get it back." His phone beeps, but it's Bob who hangs up. 

Some sinister guy in a car staking out Uncle Bob's place makes a call of his own when his laptop brings up a notification: TRACE IN PROGRESS. "Hey, boss. I think I got a location on the kid."

"I'm going to need your help on this, Finch," Reese says over the line. "I need you to get inside Baylor Zimm."

So under the cover of night he does just that, although hacking would have been a lot safer. "I'm on the trading floor now."

In the darkness, he starts his searching on a laptop. He punches a few keys, windows pop up on his screen, then four more brightly colored screens of financial data pop on behind the laptop. Finch always works in multiple stacked windows at once. One is algorithmically searching through account numbers, another shows investment volumes. One of them is red, withheld.

"Mr. Reese, I found something. Paul Ashton." Speaking of the devil, it looks like he's here too, sneaking around. Or somebody is, anyway.

"Adam's friend." There's a picture of the two of them with a check or something framed on his desk.

Finch's eyes flick back and forth as he reads and scans. "Also a senior risk manager. I found his short sale orders from last week... and the buy orders for Tritak, issued to him this morning."

"For how many?"

"About four million."

"Where is Paul now?"

"I'm about to find out. His phone is tethered to his calendar. Maybe I can hack into his GPS." A map of Manhattan pops up on his screen with a highlighted dot.

At the camp, Reese is breaking the news to Adam, who can't believe it. 

"Paul? It can't be. No, I mean, really, it can't. They put measures in place to catch securities fraud, insider trading, short-sale manipulation... How did Paul do it?"

John clicks his com on. "Paul isn't working alone. He's got a friend in the SEC."

And sure enough, Paul and Mr. SEC investigator are meeting surreptitiously in a park.

"I spent my entire career chasing down rogue traders... only to see my agency get defanged when the country needed us _watching_ the closest." 

This whole show is based on the total lack of justice in modern society. We cry for it, we beg for it, and it doesn't come. This show is about what happens in that void. Some embrace the injustice and carve out profit for themselves since they're being taken advantage of as well. Some resist it at all costs, and find ways to impose justice in any way they can, at great difficulty. People like that are pushing the rock up the hill. They know they'll never reach the top. They know the rock will just slide to the bottom again and probably crush them on the way down. But that never stops them from trying. 

The SEC guy keeps talking. "Pity. You can't beat 'em, you join 'em." He sips his cheap coffee out of a paper cup.

"And make millions along the way." Paul never had that drive for justice at all. He was always consumed by greed at any cost. Never a conflict, never a conversion.

They start talking numbers. Some $300 million they're dealing with. Tritak's under $4 a share, and it'll lose another half of that when the bell rings tomorrow and they'll buy then to cover the short.

Finch is listening from his car. He's always lit from the front, outlined in blue and white. His glasses shine, his face is half shadow. 

"And the loose ends?" SEC takes another sip.

"Well, Baylor won't be asking any more questions, but Adam is still out there." This is the only thing that concerns Paul at all. The last impediment to his profit is not yet dead.

"I have it under control."

Finch's hand sinks away from the com in his ear. The man is serious. And so is the danger for John and Adam.

At the camp, John's got his back turned while Joan starts laughing at Adam obsessing over the front page of the newspaper still.

"You'd be better off balling up that paper and stuffing it under your clothes." Adam just looks at her. "It'll keep you warm," she says, leaning in, maternal gentleness in her voice. She takes care of her flock, and Adam is a lost lamb, even if it's just for tonight.

But Adam is wallowing in self pity. "How– How did it get to this? I mean... I _earned_ everything that I achieved in my life."

John's turned back around now, his eyes low. "I know." He always knows. He always knows everything in his work now. It is a tremendous gift he never had before in his work, but it is also an enormous burden. "Your uncle told us." _Us._ Does Adam even know about Finch?

"You talked to him?"

"He told us about your father... and the $200 he'd send you." Joan watches Adam. She's had an unbelievably hard life, but she still has empathy for a man who was abandoned as a boy and carries that rejection inside himself to this day.

John lights the barrel they're in front of with a match, and it flares into a full fire. The red-orange light flickers over their faces as they watch it. 

"He doesn't know the end of the story. He doesn't know when I was 16, I went to go find my father. Took a train to New Mexico, and I found him... and he had a... a new family." John drops his gaze deep into the fire, feeling himself in that place, that heartbreak. "And then when I went to him, he tried to hand me another $200." Adam laughs in that sad, bitter way that keeps a person from crying at sheer oblivious cruelty. "I didn't want the money. I wanted a family." 

John looks toward him, his voice but a whisper. "And you found one." Adam looks up at him. "An uncle who spent his life _slaving_ over a food-truck counter... for you." John knows what it means to ache desperately for a family, love, acceptance, safety, a home. But Adam had all those things, just not from who he expected. Not who he wanted. For John, to lack gratitude and dedication for someone who opened their heart and their life to you is unthinkable. He is quietly furious with Adam in this moment.

"I'll get Bob's money back. I promised him that I would."

_Promised him..._ Reese didn't miss that point. Oh, no... "When did you talk to your uncle? They look at each other and elsewhere, the Machine sees a group of armed men emerge from a black SUV. She marks them one by one in red and black, but there's no way to tell those who need to know about them right now.

These are no standard hitmen. They're loaded for war. Balaclavas and night vision goggles. Green and red laser sights to shoot assault weapons in the dark. A red dot glides over Adam's forehead and John jumps for him.

"Get down!" 

Gunfire everywhere, a million bullets. There are so many people here, fragile and terrified. They scatter, but there's no place safe in a camp like this. Their walls are sheets, their doors are cardboard.

John wedges Adam into a corner by a pole and stands above him to pull out his gun.

"What are you doing?" Adam is terrified. "We need to go! We need to move!"

"Stay down." You do not disobey Reese when he uses that tone.

The hitmen spray a thousand bullets everywhere, but Reese only needs three to drop one of them to the ground, high tech armor and weapons or no. Three more shots, and another is down who had been half in cover.

"Now move." He grabs Adam by a fistful of jacket and drags him to his feet. 

Our remaining killer is still shooting away. John gets five shots off at him, but he manages to slip behind a pole and run. John lets him go. He sees Joan is scared but she's all right. He knows Adam is behind him. Reese lets out a hard breath of frustration, relief, and still surging adrenaline.

Later, they're at the library. Was everyone okay at the homeless camp? How? Dozens of people, hundreds of bullets, and not one person hurt other than the hitmen John killed?

"So Paul was working with Rasmussen all along." John is catching up to speed with what Finch has learned while he was with Adam.

Harold looks up from his desk. "On a _massive_ short sell bet against Tritak." His screen is filled with financial data and charts. "It's lost 90% of its value already." The money Finch understands, but... not all these pieces are fitting. Not after what just happened. "But an SEC investigator and a banker do not shoot up a homeless encampment with automatic weapons."

John shakes his head. "No. There was some serious muscle behind this."

"How's Adam doing?" Finch always cares, always worries for those under his protection. And not just their physical condition. He is always deeply invested in their emotional well-being as well.

"Not bad for a guy who's lost everything."

"Does he still have a suit?" 

"Why?"

Finch has an idea. "Paul and Rasmussen need Tritak to bottom out before they can collect on their bet."

"What are you talking about, Finch?"

He turns back to his screens. "Ever try to catch a falling knife, Mr. Reese?"

"Sounds like a good way to get cut."

"Which is why we need a _damn good_ investment banker." His eyes move back and forth between his windows, plotting in his mind. "Have Adam put on a tie. He's going back to work."

At the brokerage floor in the morning it's chaos. Everyone is trying to buy Tritak now. Paul runs into an office. "Victor, I need your help. I've got buy orders here for 4 million shares of Tritak. Can you fill these, immediately?"

"Uh... I can buy what's available, but some new player hit the market hard today. Been buying all morning." Finch is so rich he can distort the market on a whim. That's an amazing, frightening amount and kind of power. "There's a lot out there to buy. I mean, would you look? Tritak just hit $15 a unit." Paul's choking to death above him. "By the time the dumb money gets back in, it'll be at an all-time high."

"Who's the new player?" Paul talks with his hands, all anxiety. 

"Anonymous." As ever, baby. "But I have a number." He grabs a note paper and a pen. "Maybe you can... strike a deal." Paul snatches it from his hand and runs out. 

Rasmussen, the SEC investigator is there in person. "Hey, you called. What's going on?"

"I'm saving our asses, that's what's going on." He puts his phone to his ear.

In the library, Harold is casual in his impeccable suit, relaxed in his chair. He's been waiting for this, expecting it. The spider loves when the fly comes to him. He lets it ring twice, then hits the button to answer. His voice is calm and disinterested. "This is Harold Crane. Yes?"

"Sir, this is Paul Ashton with Baylor Zimm investments." Paul is trying his best to sound business professional, but he's about to pass out standing there. He rubs his head with the hand still holding Harold's number. "I need to speak with you about your majority share in Tritak Energies."

"I'm sorry," Finch says, dragging the word out a little, still as uninterested and mild as ever, but his delight sparkles in his eyes. "You'll need to speak to my banker about that."

"No, sir! Sir, I–"

Finch lets him beg for a second more, then clicks to hang up on him. Who knows if that was really necessary, but it sure was satisfying. Finch loves supplying mental misery to those who would injure, kill, or make others suffer. His vengeance, his violence is always words and numbers. And it is _agonizing._

Paul can't get off the phone, though, because Adam's called to gloat from across the room. "Sorry, Paul, but my little buying frenzy just reinvigorated the Tritak MLP, and I own all the shares. Don't worry. I'll sell you what you need. After all, what are friends for?" Paul looks back and forth between Adam and SEC man, trapped like a rat in a cage. "Your little game of Hide the Short only works when it's legal."

"You can't prove anything," Paul says, as desperate to convince himself as much as Adam.

"No, I can't. But Victor and a _dozen_ other brokers just lining up to testify against you– they'll do anything to avoid jail time."

Adam hangs up just in time for the police to show up. They're about to grab SEC man when he snaps and just takes off running to attack Adam himself with his bare hands. He gets close, but another bare hand appears out of nowhere and pops him right in the side of the head. He drops like a stone to his back, dazed.

Reese wanders out above him, staring down at him with open contempt. "John Rooney," he says. "Assets."

Paul and Mr. SEC get hauled away. I guess Adam isn't wanted for murder anymore somehow.

Elsewhere, Uncle Bob is ending his shift in the food truck, pulling the apron over his head as he hops out the back. Adam pulls up in his fancy car and his $3000 suit that he carefully buttons. John looks on from a distance. 

Adam pulls a piece of paper from his pocket to hand over to Bob. "It's all of it, all your money." Bob is amazed, jaw open. "You were the only person that I counted on when I was younger, and I _wish_ that you could have counted on me, and I hope that someday maybe you can forgive me."

Bob stuffs the paper in his pocket. It's meaningless. What matters is right there in front of him. "Of course I forgive you, kid. Of course I forgive you. You're family." He wraps his arms around a surprised but grateful Adam. "Of course I forgive you. Even if I can't stand your taste in suits." They laugh. John watches, still and distant, thinking. Feeling.

"So let me ask you this... what are we gonna do about reinvesting?" Bob is ready to try again already.

"I think that maybe you and I could look into franchising the business. But _first_ , I got some people I want you to feed."

Back at the camp, John is crouched down, helping Joan clean up the countless shell casings littered everywhere.

"I didn't know what you were into before we met, John..." Joan says, slightly slurred. She's probably always some amount of drunk. "...and I don't know now, but... you sure know how to keep things interesting." She's remarkably untraumatized by the attack by an armed paramilitary unit.

He hands her the bag. "I saw signs posted downstairs. Someone finally bought this old place."

She nods. It's not good news. " _New ownership._ " She stands. "Looks like we'll have to make camp elsewhere."

Outside, an armada of food trucks drives up. Reese stands to look out the window at them. "Actually... I know the new owner." It's Adam and his adoptive father getting out of either side of the front truck. "He's a smart kid... with a good head on his shoulders." John and Joan watch as Adam gestures to the men outside the camp to come join them to eat something hot and delicious for maybe the first time in months. 

"I don't think you'll have to be moving anywhere." He reaches out, gently places something from his pocket, money maybe, into her hand, making sure his fingers brush hers. John uses touch to convey his care.

"Hey," he says softly. She looks up at him, expectantly, surprised. His face is earnest, open, beautiful. "I never said thank you... for looking after me when I needed it."

She nods a little. "Who's looking after you these days?"

He looks back at her, the smallest smile crosses his lips. "Someone new." He walks away and she turns to watch him go.

Listening to him go is that someone new, half lit in the darkness of the library. Harold's eyes narrow a little and he tilts his head in thought as he reaches to adjust his glasses slightly. It's his armor cracking, just a little. He's finding he has to adjust himself now with John in his life. This man cares enormously for others and is grateful for any care he receives himself. He is grateful to Finch, for saving him, saving his life many times now, saving his soul. And taking care of him now, always with him, always listening, always there. This was a gift, an offering of connection, and whether he wants to or not, Harold finds it affecting. They're looking after each other now. Their relationship is changing subtly as time passes, and he finds he is changing with it. He isn't sure quite what that means yet. But he knows it's there. It's true.

At the police station, Carter's got Paul in her interrogation room. "Where's the other one?" she asks.

"What other one?"

"There are supposed to be two suspects." 

"You talking about the SEC guy? They found him dead in his apartment in Queens. Self-inflicted GSW to the head." In the interrogation room, Paul is hiding his face behind his hands wrenched together in anxiety. "Guess he couldn't stand the thought of Otisville."

She considers for a moment, but this doesn't add up. "I heard they both were arrested."

"I don't know what to tell you." He was visited by the suicide fairy.

Carter goes to watch the footage of the arrest. It's not just any officer taking Mr. SEC away. It's our old pal Mr. Scarface. Oh, no. Well, that explains the hit squad. She goes out to the trash can where Mr. Scarface had dumped something when he was taking Mr. SEC. "I was thinking... all of this... was all too slick. Too complicated." She pulls a flip phone from the trash. 

"A stockbroker and a finance cop couldn't pull this off. No. There was someone else behind the scenes. Someone who hired a team of assassins, who knew a bill would pass in state government weeks before it did." She's on a rooftop now, talking to John with the phone in her hand. "Someone who could use $300 million to finance a personal war."

He opens up the phone with gloved hands. "So what's this?"

"The bigger picture."

He puts the phone to his ear as she looks away into the distance of the vast city below them. On the street, a bald man's phone rings. He picks up casually. "Hello, John." Elias is smiling broadly. John is decidedly not. "It's been a long time." Not nearly long enough.


	18. POI 1x17 - Baby Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harold and John become doting temporary adoptive fathers to a six month old girl, and John makes a disastrous deal with the devil to save her, endangering their new partnership with Carter.

### POI 1x17 - Baby Blue

#### Landmarks

  * John and Finch abduct then take care of a baby
  * John comes to Elias for help but he charges a steep cost
  * Szymanski gets shot in the the stomach
  * Carter quits the team over Szymanski and John's tactics outside the law
  * Moretti is abducted by Elias



#### Injuries

  * **Finch**
    * gets knocked out and falls out of a car, concussion 1
  * **John**
    * Gets hypothermia locked in a refrigerator truck
    * Shreds his wrists on metal handcuffs trying to escape



* * *

The Machine is listening to some mob guys. "Did you hear? Moretti's getting out of the slammer." Does anyone actually call it the slammer? "I think Elias arranged it. Wants him out in the open." She's observing the prison, marking the barriers, the restricted zones.

There's a car outside. Carter's waiting in the driver's seat patiently, but she gasps a little in surprise when John jumps in the passenger side. 

"Where the hell did you come from?" He bent the spacetime continuum. Harold taught him how.

He smirks. "Felt like a walk."

"50 miles from Manhattan?" John stays stone-faced, now in business mode. Moretti is walking out.

"Don't tell me you're here for Moretti. How did you know he was being released?" He just looks at her. _You know how. The same way we always do._ "Should have guessed. Whenever you show up, trouble's right around the corner." That's true for sure.

He tries to read her. "What's your plan, Carter?"

"I got authority to offer Moretti protection. In exchange, he tells us how to get New York's public enemy number one."

"His own son."

She repeats it. This is her goal, her quest. "His own son, Elias." She gets out of the car to talk to Moretti, and John calls into HQ.

"You there, Finch?"

"Not for long." He's buttoning his jacket to go. "Have you seen Moretti?"

"Enjoying his first breath of freedom." We see him hugging some other mob types. "You going somewhere?"

"Got another number. Issued by the Social Security Administration two months ago." He's tugging on his coat. "To a woman named Leila Smith. Either a new citizen or a case of identity fraud. All I could find was a work address."

"We're working Moretti's number, Finch. I need you at HQ."

"The numbers don't wait in line, Mr. Reese." Strange that John would be so dismissive. He doesn't care what happens to this woman? He'd better, because Finch sure as hell does. "Be in touch."

Carter stops Moretti's car before they leave, standing in front of it with her badge out. John's watching, listening. She knocks on the back glass and Moretti rolls it down reluctantly.

"Carter, NYPD. Remember me?"

"Cops all look the same." So do washed up mobsters, but what are you going to do?

"You know Elias is looking for you."

"I don't see him."

"Not yet. But I could put you somewhere safe." She shrugs a little. "Try to keep you alive." She really does care, really is trying to keep this old murderer alive. He's a living person, everyone has value. _No one is irrelevant._

Finally he looks over at her. "Oh, I remember you now. You're the one Elias wanted to kill. The cop who's on her own. Looks like nothing's changed." Not that he can see, anyway. She's a lot less on her own these days. He rolls up the window and the car drives away.

Elsewhere, Finch is on his own mission. He parks the car and walks down the street. He passes some men putting on red hospital scrubs out of the back of a van. They catch his eye for a moment, but he's busy. He hurries down the back stairs of somewhere using the rail, his limp making an almost musical rhythm on the steps. The Machine watches him open a fuse box in what she labels _ST RAYMOND'S - Security 18 (Basement-Panel)_. He clips a wire and her feeds inside and outside the building turn to snow.

In some now darkened room, Finch is working on a computer that is the only light visible. This is apparently Saint Raymond's Clinic, according to the header on the employee database he's cracking into. He finds what he's looking for and realizes something.

"You don't work here, Leila. You're a patient." He looks up, thinking. This will require different tactics.

Meanwhile, Carter and Reese are driving around, following Moretti. 

"Any idea where he's going?" They're driving down some back roads somewhere, winding, surrounded by winter trees and fallen leaves. 

"He used to own a house out here." They're nowhere near their normal turf.

Neither is Finch, as he is now dressed as a doctor. It's a very stereotypical getup, lab coat over his shirt and tie, ID tags on his chest, a stethoscope draped around his neck. He pops out of an elevator, ready to go.

"Hello," he says to the receptionist up front. "I'm Dr. Tillman, here to see Leila Smith." Haha, using Megan's name. He puts his hand on the receptionist's counter. "Dr. Adalian asked me to check the status of her bronchitis."

The receptionist looks up at him. "She's pretty well over that by now."

He puts on his annoyed doctor voice. " _Nonetheless_ , do you have her chart for me?"

She leads him back, grabs a folder from the wall, and unlocks a door with her ID. One foot in the door, Finch stops cold along with his heart.

"Here she is..." the receptionist says sweetly. Leila isn't a woman. She's a baby, old enough to be standing against the side of her crib, but still tiny and pink in her little onesie. She's got a green pacifier keeping her quiet, but her bright blue eyes look around. "Our own little angel."

Finch has to stay cool and keep up his cover, but this is instantly so much more complicated and alarming. He reads her chart as the receptionist rubs at Leila's back. The baby herself coos and bounces a little at the end of the crib. She has a pastel mobile and two stuffed animals with her, a lion and a red kangaroo perhaps. The nursery room is decorated with decals, cute monkeys climbing on a tree.

"No parents listed," Finch says, surprised.

"Oh, Leila's a safe haven baby. Dr. Adalian himself found her outside the clinic." She ruffles Leila's wispy blonde baby hair. 

"So who applied for her social security number?"

"That was me. Wanted to be sure the state knew who Leila was even if her own parents didn't care. Normally she'd be given up for adoption by now, but she had medical issues like her bronchitis. She'll find a home soon." Yes, she will.

"Thank you, nurse." 

She leaves and Finch meets his number personally. Leila is pawing at the corner of her crib right by him, cooing and bouncing up and down. She really is remarkably adorable. "Hello, Leila," he says softly. "Now who in the world would want to hurt you?" She watches him, curious with her little eyes over her pacifier.

The drive continues in the Upstate nowhere. Reese tilts his head a little in the passenger seat. He sees something.

At the clinic, Finch is still reading through Leila's file, but she reaches out and tugs at the top of the folder with her fat baby fingers. It's cute, but Finch is distracted. Something is wrong. There are voices outside talking to the receptionist nurse. They say they're here for Leila too, to transfer her to another clinic. It's the men in the red scrubs from outside. The men with the van. Finch's eyes scan down to their shoes. The nurse wears practical sneakers. The men are wearing heavy black leather boots. One has a large duffel bag in his hand. Oh, god. Finch silently retreats back from the glass window in the door and out of sight.

In the car, Reese's phone chirps. Finch is stressed in his ear. "Mr. Reese, I think I have a situation."

But there's nothing John can do about it, because whatever he saw coming earlier is happening now. "Me too. I have to get back to you." There's another car in front of Moretti, stopped.

At the clinic, the nurse and the men are coming down the hallway toward Finch and Leila. 

On the road, Moretti's driver is slowing to a stop. "Looks like an accident," he says. 

"Go around them." Moretti has a bad feeling about this too, and it's not like he has compassion for others anyway. 

As they drive by, they can see a motorcycle on its side in the middle of the road next to the stopped car. A woman is crouched beside it. "Please!" she calls out to them. "Can you help us?"

"Keep going," Moretti commands, and the driver puts the pedal down. 

Not in time, though, because they're plowed in the side by a big 90's pickup truck. The driver gets knocked headfirst into the steering column, and Moretti is jostled in back. The woman and the motorcyclist stand up. They're armed. They were ready. They immediately take out Moretti's guys who try to defend him, and the woman takes Moretti at gunpoint, shouting at him to get out of the car. 

But Carter and Reese are there now, jumping out of their car. "Police! Drop your weapon!" Carter shouts, but it's a shootout instead. Yet another on duty shooting for Carter. John's with her, so two of the guys he drops instantly with one shot a piece. Carter gets the woman, and it's all quiet on the back road again. Carter runs up and fetches Moretti out of the back seat. He's the only survivor of this whole mess. John comes with her, following her lead.

In a house somewhere in the city, Carter leads Moretti into a room. 

"I heard what happened," says a voice inside. It's Szymanski. "You're very lucky she was there, Mr. Moretti."

"Yeah? Who are you?"

"Detective Szymanski."

"Another cop," Moretti grumbles. "Do I have to stay here?"

"You're a free man, Gianni," Carter says. "You can walk out of here and into a _bullet_ anytime, or you can stay and help us get Elias before he gets you." Moretti considers. It's not like he's got a lot of choices. He nods.

Carter comes out of the building sighing. It's night now. She walks up to Reese, who'd been waiting.

"A mafia don in hiding. You plan on clearing this with your bosses?"

"It's already cleared. Elias doesn't own the whole department. Not yet." She tosses her head, disappointed. "Still a few good cops, like Szymanski in there, who want Elias taken down and think Moretti is the best way to do it. Anyway..." Her voice softens. "Thank you."

John is always touched to be thanked, particularly by someone he respects so highly. "You're welcome." She will always be welcome to him.

"Stay out of trouble," she says as she turns to walk away. Like that is ever going to happen. John gets a goodbye smile to go with his thanks.

He's smiling pretty broadly when he turns around to call his boss. "Hey, Finch. How's it going?"

"Oh... it's going." Harold is driving through the darkness, a band of light stretched across his eyes from the rearview mirror. He's clearly very stressed. But he's still trying to balance everything they've got going at once. "What about Moretti?"

"Elias had a getting out of jail party planned. We crashed it." _We._ John always loves when it's we. He loves it when he's not alone. "What happened with the other number, Finch?" Finch looks down at something next to him, doesn't answer. Reese only gets silence over the line. "Cat got your tongue?"

"I'm afraid I may have done something rather rash." What else was he going to do? Let those obvious kidnappers get what they came for? 

Reese doesn't like the sound of that. "What do you mean by rash?"

We see what he means, what he was looking at down beside him. It's Leila cooing in a cardboard box on the floor of the car, wrapped in a fuzzy yellow blanket she's chewing on.

The next day, they're back at the library. Finch has made a playpen of sorts for Leila out of books layered into a fence circling her. There are multiple soft blankets and sheets for her to lie on, and she's chewing on a long dark piece of fabric.

"Is this one of your ties, Finch? I hope you gave her some food and not just your hand-me-downs." John is standing above the piled books, looking down at their guest.

Finch is walking in from the back with his glasses off. Maybe Leila smudged them with her baby fingers. He rubs them clean with a cloth and puts them back on. He always looks so naked without them. "Chicken and prunes is her favorite."

"Sounds, um.. disgusting." John watches her flail Finch's tie about as she flaps her arms. She's got a cute little spotted top on with embroidered cherries on the front. "But why on earth would anyone want to kill her?" It's almost exactly what Finch said when he saw her too.

Finch sits behind his monitors. "Somehow I don't see anyone planning a murder here. My guess is... that if they were successful in kidnapping her, they'd smuggle her out of the country and dump her in an orphanage." His eyes scan over the screens. "Somewhere babies are plentiful and birth records aren't."

"But why would they want to get rid of her?" John asks. He's over by the old card catalogs, now piled with baby things: food, formula, bottles and a warmer. Where did Finch get all these things so quickly? How?

"She might be evidence of an affair, or she might be an obstacle to someone getting a big, fat legacy. As for who they are, I have no idea." He looks above the screens at his charge and raises his voice a little. "But since she kept me up all night, I looked into the clinic's finances. They received a big gift... fifty _thousand_ just about the time Leila was born, and ten thousand every month since then."

"Who's the donor?"

"Anonymous. I sent the clinic a sternly worded email from the IRS demanding the donor's tax ID number and threatening to review their charitable status if they didn't answer quickly. We'll see how that works." 

The computer beeps. "Uh, oh. Amber alert." We see it on the screen. Leila Smith, age 6 months, missing since 3/6/12. 

John's reading along. "Baby kidnapped from St. Raymond's clinic last night. Suspect is a... short man with mousy hair and thick glasses." Finch's face gets more and more horrified as the description continues. The sketch is absolutely insane, an Eraserhead freak with a triangular face and round glasses, ears sticking out a mile, huge nose. "It's... not very flattering, Finch, but better than the picture."

"It's no wonder they never catch anybody with these things." He can't believe this is what they got from his face.

"You think Carter can piggyback the police investigation?"

"I'll ask her." He looks up at John. "You can spend some quality time with Leila."

Finch meets Carter in an aisle of a small store. He's pulling packages of diapers down. "Detective. Has Mr. Moretti given you anything on Elias?"

"Not yet, but, um, we're working on him." She's observant, and she certainly doesn't miss the odd nature of what's in his cart. "Who you buying that stuff for?"

He looks over at her, speaking low. "That's why I wanted to talk to you. A baby went missing from a clinic in Washington Heights last night."

She scoffs, because Carter is always scoffing at the ridiculous men she's surrounded by. "Missing? It was _stolen_. By some weird looki–" She doesn't make it through the word, because she doesn't have to. She's talking to the weird looking guy. He stiffens and looks at her. She tilts her head. "No. _You didn't_."

"She was in imminent danger of kidnapping," he says in his own defense, and moves on down the aisle.

"So _you_ kidnapped her? You know there's an amber alert out on you."

"Yes, and that's why we need your help." He starts selecting various glass jars of baby food from the shelf.

"Help? I should arrest you." But of course, they both know she's not going to. She knows he's doing everything he can to help this girl, not hurt her, even if the means are... unusual. "Where's the baby anyway?"

"Leila's safe. She's with John."

Oh, Carter cannot believe this guy. " _John?! John?_ You trust him with a baby?" She yells at him in whispers and he winces a little at her justified anger. She's okay(ish) with Harold taking care of a baby, but John is out of the question. And Finch more or less agrees.

"I realize it's not ideal. So the sooner we can resolve this, the better."

"What do you want _me_ to do? Apart from _not arresting you_."

"Go to the clinic. See what you can find out about Leila's parents."

"I heard she was a safe haven baby. Clinic's not going to have that information."

He meets her eyes. "I think they know more than they claim. Talk to a Nurse Abbot. She seemed especially fond of Leila." And is probably the one who described him as weird looking.

He arrives up at the counter. The clerk is all smiles. "Congratulations! Is it your first?" Finch is a deer in headlights. Does she think he's with Carter?

At the station, Fusco's stuffing his face with donuts. That doll Finch got him is ever more appropriate. Simmons comes up from behind like a ghoul. "That how you keep your boyish figure?"

Fusco takes a sip of coffee. "Bite me."

"Did you hear Gianni Moretti got out of prison yesterday then vanished? All state police found was five dead goombas."

"Mobsters killing each other, how tragic."

"Except it wasn't just mobsters. Your partner was there too."

That gets Lionel's attention. "Carter?" No, your other partner Detective Air Bud, the crime solving dog. 

"Looks like she and a couple of cowboys got some kind of rinky-dink off-book operation." Okay, first, does this make John a couple of cowboys all by himself or are we including Szymanski in there? And Fusco's got to be impressed. He's got his own rinky-dink off-book operation and now Carter does too? It's catching, apparently. He'll figure out it's the same one only later. "They've hidden Moretti. We want to find out where."

"HR can't find out? Thought you guys had your fingers in all the pies."

He turns to face him. "You are one of the pies, Fusco." Yep. It's why John left him there. He's one of HR's pies and one of John's at the same time. Poor Lionel is a bit aghast. He hates being on this side of the fence anymore. "Find out where she's got Moretti stashed."

At the clinic, the receptionist nurse is pretty stressed out at this point talking to Carter. "Like I told the other detectives, we don't know about the parents. Leila was just left outside the clinic."

"Was there anything found on Leila?"

Before Carter can get an answer, she's interrupted by a man walking up. "I'm Dr. Adalian. Who are you?"

"Detective Carter, SVU." For today, anyway.

"Detective. As I'm sure Nurse Abbot explained, we don't know where Leila came from."

"You must have kept something. Like, what about her clothes, her blankets?"

Nurse Abbot wants to say something, but the officious doctor man won't let her open her mouth. "No. The, uh, safe haven law was designed to protect newborns, not prosecute their parents. It's not our job to hunt people down. Thank you." And he's gone.

The nurse looks sadly at Carter. She wants to help, but she can't. "Sorry." She goes to leave, but Carter grabs her arm before she disappears because she can tell there's more to this story. She can see it in this woman's eyes.

"Excuse me." She talks low. "All I care about is Leila." She slips a card in the woman's hand. "If you can think of anything, call me. Please."

Back at the library, it's changing time for Leila, who is chewing on a stuffed animal. Finch is teaching Reese how to do it. "This flap here, that flap there. Neat and simple." It's pretty amusing to watch two men in fancy suits doing this. John watches like he's watching Finch defuse a bomb. 

"I see your time at MIT wasn't wasted." It wasn't. That's where he met Nathan, and he was with him when Nathan had Will. That may well be where he learned all of this, good sweet Uncle Harold. He's good with babies. You can imagine him with little Will when he was born.

John fiddles uselessly with the baby's clothes and arms. He doesn't know what he's doing with an infant in her onesie. This isn't something he's ever had to do. He's pretended to be many things as a spy, but a father was never one of them.

Behind him, Finch has maps of the world hanging draped over a wooden rack with dowels, beautiful remnants of the library.

Finch's email dings. "Oh, excellent. The accountants at the clinic have coughed up the tax ID numbers of their donor. Nothing like a fear of the IRS to produce results."

Reese wraps his arms around Leila and picks her up so she faces out. He's awkward with her, but delicate and careful. She's secure in his arms, bundled up next to his chest.

"Tax ID belongs to Petrosian Construction." John walks over with a bounce in his step with Leila. She's smiling up next to his face. He holds a little fuzzy pink bear next to her cheek as he looks at Finch's screen. "Company owned by... Adnan Petrosian." A picture from the company's website pops up with the man smiling. "And if we dive into that swamp of indiscretion known as social media... we will learn that... Adnan Petrosian has been married to Nicola for more than 20 years." As he talks, John lets Leila down low enough to reach for the monitors and the keyboards as she coos softly. "They have one son Bradley, who's taking a masters in finance at NYU." 

There's a picture of the family on the screen. John puts Leila up to it, points with the bear. "Da-da? Or... Da-da?" He looks back and smiles at Finch, who's not having it.

"Be serious, Mr. Reese. I need you to get close to this family." John hands him back the baby. She makes happy noises.

John's at work quickly, taking pictures with his zoom lens through a fancy black metal fence. Their house is a mansion, their cars are expensive. They don't look happy as the son puts luggage in his trunk and his parents seem to be yelling at him. Reese calls in.

"Hey, Finch. Got eyes on the Petrosians, getting ears." He's fiddling with some kind of black device, screwing it onto the fence. 

Back at the library, Harold's distracted, because it's time for Leila's bottle, and he's trying to get her to take it. He's taken his jacket off, just in his vest and dress shirt.

"These guys have serious money, Finch. You probably go to the same country club." Yeah, I don't see Finch hanging out at the golf course.

"Be that as it may," he says to the air, keeping his eyes on the little girl in his lap, "do they seem like a family that's lost a baby?"

Reese has got the microphone working now, and the Petrosians are not getting along. "...your behavior has damaged this family's good name, and I've already spent a fortune getting you out of trouble." 

Son's getting in the car, angry himself. "So sorry I embarrassed you, Dad."

"Bradley! I want to know... is this it, or are there more _unpleasant surprises_?"

"It's been taken care of, okay?"

"Looks like Mommy and Daddy are covering up for the son," John says.

But Finch is only half paying attention. There's someone more important with him. He talks to her in a high singsong voice. "How about a delicious bottle?"

"Finch, are you listening?"

Mostly, no. Leila takes the bottle and keeps her wide blue eyes fixed on Harold. "Oh, there you go," he says softly to her. It's lovely that he knows what he's doing. He was a good uncle with Will. He's good with children, loves them, even if he knows he'll never have any of his own. Not human, anyway.

At the station, Fusco answers a ring at Carter's desk for no good reason other than he's being nosy in his double agent role with HR. "Detective Carter's phone."

"Can I have Detective Carter, SVU?" says that poor put-upon nurse, hiding out in her car to make this call.

"Carter works homicide, sweetheart, not SVU." Hey, how about you not sexually harass the victims, huh, Fusco? 

Carter rips the phone out of his hands and gestures with her head for him to get the hell away. "This is Carter. How can I help you?"

"It's Mary Abbot. The man on the phone said you worked homicide."

"Oh, don't worry about him." She looks at him hard. "He's new here." She sits on her desk facing away to talk to the nurse. "How could I help you, Mary?"

"Leila did have something on her when she arrived. A... a bracelet."

"Do you still have it?"

"I gave it to the director, Dr. Adalian. I asked him but he said he didn't remember." 

Carter's eyes are big, excited to have something to work with, a toehold. "What did it look like?"

"Silver, with two initials carved on it, CC."

"Okay, thank you, Mary. I'll talk to you soon." Carter's always so warm and welcoming with people she's taking care of. But she's not taking care of Fusco. She's still pissed off at him and she glares at him over their desks. 

Finch is working at tracking down the lead Carter's given them. "All right, Detective, I've found one CC working in the Petrosian home, Carrie Crosswell." 

Nearby, John strolls over to check on Leila. She's asleep on her side, warm in a fuzzy wrap with sleeves and a blanket. He looks at her with a soft longing. For both of them, she represents a life they can never touch. This is as close as they will come, this delicate innocent dove in their care. They have to find a home for her, a place to grow and be safe.

Finch is still working at the computer, focused. "...But she's 58 – a little old for a fling." Oh, Finch, that's not too old for a fling, it's just usually too old to get pregnant from that fling. "Now I'm checking employee files at Petrosian Construction." 

Carter is listening, can't believe this nonsense. She knows she should at this point, but she still can't. This never stops being insane. "You hacked into his company?"

" _Hacked_ is such an ugly word." But yes, exactly. "...And we have two more CCs, Chad Columbo, 40, a welder, unlikely to bear a child... And Claudia Cruz, 20, receptionist in the head office." That gets both of their attention.

"Claudia Cruz... checking." Carter types, keeping the phone tucked under her shoulder. 

Finch is still working too. "Employment with Petrosian ended eight months ago, just when her pregnancy would have started to show."

John's come around to look now. "Get me an address. I'll go and talk to her." 

Carter would be a better bet, but she has bad news. "No, you won't. She's dead." Finch sinks back in his chair, stunned and saddened. Leila's mother is dead. She will never meet her. "Name showed up on a crime scene report." Carter's got the report up on the screen along with a picture of a burned out hallway. It's grim. "Died in her apartment from a fire four days ago. M.E. ruled it as an accident."

Finch looks up at John. _Does that seem likely to you?_ Yeah, he doesn't think so either.

The Machine is watching her family taking a walk in the park with their temporary daughter. John's got her strapped to his chest facing him with Finch at his side. Leila's wearing a cute little black hat to keep her head warm. Two women walk by and coo at her, because it's just too ridiculously cute, this beautiful man and his partner and their tiny pink baby. "Oh, she's so adorable!" John turns toward them so they can greet Leila a little. "Aww, hi, honey. Look at that smile!" They smile too, at Reese and Finch. "Thanks, bye."

Carter watched this whole thing. She can't believe any of this. Every single day, it gets crazier. When they get over to her by the water, she's incredulous. "You brought her with you??" Finch hangs back, looking at someone's dachshund on a leash bumbling by. "Every cop in the city is looking for that kid."

"I'm teaching her to go undercover," he says, squinting into the setting sun. Leila's black hat is the only thing dark and hard at all on her, but it suits her being with Reese. She's got her hands up on his chest, but she's very interested in Carter now beside them. "She's a natural."

"She's a little angel," she says to the baby in a soft voice. This is Carter's first time meeting Leila, and like all of them, she's instantly charmed. Of the three of them, she's the only parent. Bringing her attention back to Reese, she's a lot less pleased. "Something happens to her, John, so help me god..."

Finch has joined them, and pipes in. "We're trying to stop anything from happening. We know she was in a clinic funded by the Petrosians, and we know her mother _worked_ for the Petrosians. So it's probable that the father _is_ one of the Petrosians."

John's thinking as he holds Leila's hand with his own in a black glove. He swings back and forth a little with his body to keep her moving. "But why does mom end up dead?"

Carter looks over, sad for this child and her mother. "Maybe she agreed to give her up for adoption, then changed her mind, said she wanted to keep it."

Finch follows her logic. "Well, that would expose the whole thing. DNA would prove who the father was, he'd have to provide for the baby. The family would lose out."

"It's motive," she says. 

"Bump off the mom, make the baby disappear, problem solved." John's as disgusted as all of them.

Finch raises an eyebrow. "We need to find out if Claudia's death really was an accident."

"I already pulled the autopsy and crime scene reports. I want to look through them with a mentor of mine, works for the fire department."

"Good. I'll see if Claudia's parents know anything. John will follow Bradley Petrosian."

John looks down at the little girl playing with his fingers. "After I've fed Leila."

Carter looks up at him with threat and hope and worry in her eyes. She knows he means well, is trying, but this is scary business and he is a chaos magnet. There is so much on the line. Leila looks up at her again and she sighs. "Bye bye," she tells the sweet little piece of evidence. 

At Claudia Cruz's parents' house, Finch arrives in character.

"Mrs. Cruz. Lucas Bennet, Department of Family Services." He's always dressed down for these, still nicely, but missing his panache and color. He shakes the woman's hand. 

Her husband comes up from behind having let him in. "He says he's here about Claudia." 

Finch is still holding the woman's hand. "I'm very sorry for your loss." He genuinely is.

"Why are you here?" 

"We had a report, um..." His eyes catch a little shrine to their lost daughter. It's heartbreaking. Pictures of her, when she was tiny, as she grew up, as a smiling adult. All of them surrounded by icons of Mary and candles of the saints. His voice is softer when he continues. "...from a neighbor of Claudia's – an anonymous report – that she was pregnant."

The father isn't having that. "She was not. Tell me who said that."

"Please, Mr. Cruz, the source is anonymous... we have to investigate."

Mrs. Cruz directs Finch to a chair and she and her distraught husband settle into the small couch across from him. "Claudia wasn't pregnant. I'm her mother, we talked about everything."

"When did Claudia move into her apartment?"

"About nine months ago. Why?"

"About the same time that she stopped working at Petrosian Construction?" They don't answer. He presses, gently. "Did you see her during that period?"

There are tears in poor dad's eyes, it's crushing. "Not for a few months, no." He smiles a little, remembering his daughter. "She was kind of funny about us coming around."

"Did Claudia have a silver bracelet?"

"Yes, with her initials on it. My mother gave it to her when she was a baby." Well, that seals it. Now what? The mom is beside herself. "Please, just tell us. Was she pregnant? Did she have a baby?"

"We believe it's possible." A bit more than possible, but he has to be careful how he goes about this. 

They're overjoyed, half delighting, half crying, looking at each other. "Then where is it? Can we see it?"

"I can try to arrange a meeting on neutral ground... but it would have to be kept _confidential_ ," he emphasizes. This is all still so dicey and dangerous, but now Leila at least has a family.

"Oh, of course," says the father. 

"What else can you tell me about Claudia? Was she in a relationship, for example?"

It takes some silent nudging from the dad, but mom finally answers as she rises to fetch something. "She left some papers here about a month before she died. We found this." She hands over a picture of Claudia smiling with a young man. "I think he's Mr. Petrosian's son, Bradley." He sure is.

Later, John's after Bradley, who's looking suspicious as he walks down a busy street.

"Any luck, Mr. Reese?"

"Bradley Petrosian has been a good student. Hasn't phoned anyone, hasn't spoken to any suspicious characters." We see the man dip into some little coffee shop somewhere.

"So are we barking up the wrong tree?" Finch is busy putting up fresh faces on the cracked glass.

"Maybe... hang on." Something's happening in the shop. Someone has been waiting for him. "He's meeting someone." And that someone puts his hand to Bradley's face and kisses him tenderly. "Finch..." Reese chimes in. "You were right about the wrong tree."

"What?"

Bradley is laughing happily with his adorable boyfriend. "I don't think Bradley Petrosian was sleeping with Claudia Cruz."

"Sorry?"

"His tastes run in the other direction."

Finch almost says oh, silently. He looks over the pictures in front of him. "So we should look at the father, Adnan."

"I'll get eyes on him. How's their baby doing?" 

"Oh, she's–" He turns around to check the book pen, but one side has been demolished, and Leila's nowhere to be seen. "Reese, you'd better get back here." Poor Harold, there's so much sudden fear in his voice. 

Carter's with her fire department friend at the crime scene. "Makes sense," he says. "Lost of candles. One catches the drapes... Do we know why Claudia didn't run?"

"Blood screen showed traces of alcohol." They're running flashlights over the ruins of this apartment. It is blackened char and broken glass everywhere. It is a tomb. "She was drinking, she fell asleep..." He points up with the light to the ceiling. "Faulty smoke alarm." 

"Fire marshal said the battery was dead."

"Battery isn't the problem, wiring is. The hot wire is just plastic coating." He pulls at it to show her. "Wire itself was removed. No connection, no alarm. Dead battery could be an accident, but this... You got the autopsy photos?"

"Yeah." Carter is grim. This is such a terrible way to go. "M.E. said heat caused the cracks, not trauma."

The old man leans over her folder to look. "High temperatures can cause the skull to fissure... cracks along the plate lines of the skull." He points at the photo of a hole in a charred skull. "There is no natural plate line there, but..."

"It was caused by a blow. She was unconscious when the fire was set." Carter swings her light around, looking. "But a blow with _what_?" 

"Bone was _cracked_ , wasn't pierced or shattered. Something... _round_." This guy's good.

Her light catches on the charred remains of a lamp. She picks it up. "Like this?"

"Could be. You wash the soot off that, you might get lucky. Heat can etch fingerprints into the metal. Could give you your killer." Man, this guy is a fountain of information. I don't even know if we got his name. 

At the library, John's back and he's furious as they're searching. "But how could you let her go?!"

"I didn't! She just knocked down the books and walked off." Poor Finch sounds like he's about to cry.

"She can't _walk_ , Finch."

"Oh, god." His breath is short. He limps around the room, looking in every corner he can think of. "I'll never forgive myself." No, he wouldn't. Neither would John.

John hears her before he sees her, a soft cooing from the ground. He starts to move toward her, but stops, frozen in place. She looks up at him, laughing, pink and fat and sweet. But in her hands is something big and black. And it has a pin.

He crouches in front of her, talks softly. "Give it to me now, Leila. Please, just give it to me."

Finch calls from the distance. "You got her?" He hurries to meet them and his heart stops when he sees her. She's now gnawing on the back end of the device in her hand. "Oh my god, that's a grenade."

John's trying to talk the grenade out of her hands, smiling at her, trying not to panic. "Please, just..." He carefully lifts it away from her. She's still reaching for it, her new slippery toy. "Just a tear gas grenade," he says when it's safely in his possession. Leila creeps toward him and he holds her up with one hand.

"It's still a grenade!" Finch hurries to pick her up and take her away, held tight to himself. He talks softly to her, soothing her, or more accurately, soothing himself. "You're okay, you're okay, sweetie. Come on, it's okay."

John puts the grenade back on its low open shelf and follows. Now it's Finch's turn to be angry as he limps down the corridor with Leila in his arms. "I told you to move your arsenal."

"I was going to..." He's petulant, but also frustrated with himself too.

"When? After the whole place is blown up?" Behind him, John pinches the bridge of his nose, stressed, head aching. "You know how I feel about guns. This really isn't working. One of us always being here, _minding the baby_." Their married argument here is cute, but also cutting. They love her and they love being with her, but they both know that they are not cut out for this and certainly the lives they lead do not have any safe space for a fragile, innocent child.

John shakes his head. "Well, you're the one who stole her."

Finch carefully hands her over to him. "Thanks for reminding me of that," he says bitterly. He gets the baby carrier off the coat rack and pulls it over his shoulders. There are a lot of straps to fasten. "I'm going to take her to her grandparents. They can keep an eye on her until we neutralize the threat." 

John hands the baby back to him and Harold gently greets her. "Finch, the bad guys got to Claudia. They could be after Sammy and Veda too."

He settles Leila securely in front of him. "That's why I've already moved them to a safe house."

Carter's busy with evidence bags at the station. Fusco is suspicious. "What, are you working a case without me?"

"Just an accidental death, which might turn out to be a homicide."

"Who is it?"

"A girl named Claudia Cruz. Just left the crime scene." Lionel is all squinty suspicion. "Might have found the murder weapon." 

Her phone rings from her pocket. She's quick to pick it up and run off for some quiet and privacy. "Szymanski. I am so sorry. I got caught up. I'll be there as soon as possible." Yeah, with all the excitement with the baby, everyone pretty much forgot about the miserable old mobster.

"Anything I can do to help?" Fusco says, oh so helpfully. He's got so many conflicting interests in everything Carter does.

"Think you could take these down to the crime lab for me? Ask them to put a rush on it?" She hands over the evidence bags.

"Yeah, sure." But as she's turning to leave, he doesn't stop. "But is that it?" She doesn't answer right away. "Szymanski, isn't he organized crime?" She still doesn't answer. He leans in. "Carter, you know I got your back, right?" Well, uh... She sighs. She really does not know that, not for sure at all.

She looks around, making sure there's no one around. "Szymanski asked me out on a date." She keeps her eyes low, trying to look as embarrassed as possible. "Can you not... spread it around, please?"

He doesn't press, even though he knows she's lying. "I'll try not to. Look, why don't you uh, go ahead, and I'll run this down to the lab, all right?"

"Thanks, Lionel. I owe you." She actually called him Lionel, as he asked her to do, like his friends do. He keeps his lips tightly shut. This tightwire act is hard.

John and Finch pull up to the safe house. John's driving, Harold's in the back with the baby in the reverse oriented infant car seat. "I'll check if it's clear," Reese whispers.

When he opens the door to the darkened house, he knows instantly it's not. There's muffled shouting in another room, in another language. John pulls his gun out, approaches the interior door silently. The second he opens it, a man in a balaclava standing above the grandparents gagged and bound to chairs shoots at him. He gasps and rolls forward behind the cover of a couch. The guy gets a couple of useless shots off that break some glass before he's tackled in the darkness. John rips the balaclava off along with a necklace and kicks hard at the man's knees above him from the ground. They grapple a little, and the man manages a headbutt, knocking John back. The man runs, getting a few more shots off backwards as he goes, slowing Reese's pursuit. 

Outside, he watches a van squeal its tires as it drives away quick. He runs, but he can't catch it. He turns back around, catching his breath. He's walking slowly only for a moment, until he sees something. His face falls and he takes off running again. "Finch!" He crouches down, and reaches out. Finch is unconscious on the ground, bleeding from a head wound. Add one to the Finch concussion count. That's bad enough, but above him, there's something even worse. Leila's car seat is empty. 

Not long after, Finch is awake and mournful inside the house. He keeps his head down, his fist pressed hard to his lips. Veda, the grandmother, dabs gently with a cotton ball at the nasty scrape on his forehead. John walks in quietly and Finch questions him, heartbroken. "What did you get?"

"There was a GPS tracker on their car," he says, holding up the cursed little device in his hand. The grandparents look at each other, sad and scared and guilty.

Finch leans back, looks up at them, holds up his hand. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry you're still in danger. We have to move you again. Can you get your things?" They hurry away and Finch leans forward. He's still dizzy, bell rung, but desperately afraid for this tiny person he'd only an hour ago held to his heart in his arms.

"If we don't recover Leila tonight," John says, serious and grim, just as sick to his stomach, "she'll be out of the country. Gone for good."

"Any idea who those men were?"

He holds out the necklace he grabbed. There's a growling bear or wolf or something engraved on it along with some words in a foreign language. "They're Albanians or Croats, probably one of the Eastern European crime groups."

Finch looks up at him. "What are you going to do?"

John is beyond talking. "Whatever I have to." He's gone. Finch looks away. There is nothing good from here on out.

At the hideout with Moretti, he's getting his booze on and complaining to Carter. "How come I only ever see you or Szymanski? If this Elias is such a big deal, where's the rest of the NYPD?"

"You got a bad memory, Gianni," she says, standing over him, leaning. "Elias just tried to kill you. The more cops know you're here, the more chance of him finding you. So for your own sake, help us find him first." Her phone rings. It's the crime lab.

"Hey, Carter. They said they had a rush job for you on some murder weapon in the, uh..." The man squints at the label. "...Claudia Cruz case."

"They get anything?"

"Yep, they got a match. Your killer was in the system, thanks to a road rage incident about ten years ago."

"What's the name?"

At the Petrosian's mansion, the husband and wife are having their booze for the evening too by a huge fancy fireplace. They scream and wince away when their big glass door gets smashed in. Glass goes flying. A figure in all black storms in, and moves directly for the husband. 

"Who are you? What are you...?" He probably would have more questions but the only sounds that come out of him after that are chokes and gagging. John takes him by the throat and holds him against the wall by the fireplace. The wife yells for security, but good luck with that.

"Where is she?" John says, that look of absolute fury in his eyes. The man is terrified, as he should be. If John tightens his fingers just a little, he could snap his neck like a twig.

"What? Who?" 

The delay gives time for some bodyguard other guy in a suit to come in, but he's obviously no match for John. Reese throws something at him from the table to get him distracted and advances. A couple of quick punches, and the man tumbles over a coffee table, breaking some glass and groaning. He's down for the count. 

John turns back around instantly, holds up the necklace and takes the man back by the throat. "The owner of this kidnapped Leila. Tell me where he's taken her." The man looks over at his wife. They're both scared for their lives, which they absolutely should be.

"I don't know," he says, his words crushed under John's grip. "I swear to god I don't."

"You had an affair with Claudia Cruz, didn't you?"

"Okay. Yes." There's no sense in lying now.

"You had Claudia killed and the baby kidnapped."

"No! I would never do anything like that."

"What are you going to do, torture him?" the wife asks from the side. John throws the man down to the ground. His phone chirps. "You've tripped the silent alarm. The police are going to be here in five minutes." 

The phone has some interesting news from Carter. "Have ID'd Claudia's killer. Wife's prints on murder weapon." Oh, no. John looks up slowly from the phone and his eyes drift over to her. He's so terrifying when he's like this. He walks closer.

"I'm not going to torture him. Because your fingerprints are on the weapon that killed Claudia."

From the side, her husband is horrified. "Nicola, what did you do?" She snaps at him to shut up.

John is right up in her face now. "Did you hire the men who took Leila? Did you?" He's not inclined to attack a woman, but he's also not inclined to give deference to any cold blooded killer and kidnapper like this. 

She looks up at him with defiance. "Yes."

"Call them."

"I can't. The number doesn't work anymore."

"Where did you get it?"

"Family. In Europe." Husband on the side is just dumbfounded and horrified. His wife is a murderer. "I called it, the man answered, I told him the problem. Once I paid him, he said the number would be dead and I couldn't contact him, not even to stop the job."

John holds up the necklace to her, but stares into her eyes, into the emptiness of her soul. "And the job was to make Claudia's death look like an accident. Get rid of the baby."

Husband is disgusted. "How could you do such a thing?"

She gives him all side eye. "Somebody had to clean up your mess." She looks up at John. "And there's _nothing_ you can do. They're _gone_." 

The monster that Kara tried to make of John would strangle this woman then and there for her evil. He is not that monster, but he still hears its call inside him in times like these. He pushes past her shoulder and walks back out of the broken door into the night. The law can have her. Carter can have her. He knows she won't let her go.

It doesn't take him long to find a bar with that same bear symbol up on the glass behind the bartender. He walks behind a balding guy watching the TV and nursing a beer. John tosses the necklace into the glass and it sinks hard to the bottom. "I want the man that owns this."

The guy unwisely decides he'll break the glass and cut John with it, but before he can do more than shatter the glass against the bar, John's got his arm pinned behind him and his face down against the broken shards scattered on the wood. Reese leans in, cold and ruthlessly calm. 

"He has kidnapped a child. A baby. I want to know where he is." He jerks the man a little more down into the glass. 

They've gotten the attention of the other patrons of the bar. Everyone's looking at them now, and some burly guys are approaching. One flicks out a switchblade.

John just looks over at them and smiles. That devil's smile, all razor teeth. "Really?" He'll enjoy this.

Fusco's followed Carter and he's watching her and Moretti through a pair of binoculars and a half closed blind. Now he has to decide what he does with what he knows.

At the bar, the fight's already over. All of the others in the bar are scattered unmoving around the floor along with glass and fallen barstools. He kicks one to make sure he's dropped for good, and he gets back to the man he came to see. He has him turned around now, his hand squeezing the man's throat. "One more time. How do I find him?"

"I don't know."

John cocks the gun he has to the man's temple. "I _will_ kill you." He's sweating, terrifying, and absolutely serious. 

"So kill me, I still don't know. _Your baby's gone!_ Whoever he was just handed him over. Even he couldn't tell you. So go ahead. Shoot." John considers it, moving the gun more in front of this trash's face. This man was perfectly fine moving a tiny baby like a kilo of coke. He is amoral and worthless. But John is not.

At the library, Finch has put up Leila's picture on the glass, as if he needed a reminder of her sweet face and the little wisps of her fine blond baby hair. John's there now, his head hung low. 

"So no one knows where she is." Finch can't believe it, it's too terrible.

John shakes his head. "Not no one." He looks over at Finch, his voice low and dark. "There is someone who knows the underworld. The soldiers, the gangs, the syndicates." 

Finch knows what he's getting at and he's horrified by it. His words are almost inaudible. "Come on. You're not serious."

"You still have that burner phone?" He walks past him.

Now Finch has his voice back, stern. "No, we can't use it." 

John looks back over his shoulder. He's standing in front of all their baby supplies, still standing on the card catalogs. "Leila is in the hands of men who won't hesitate to kill her if things go bad."

"It's still too risky." He's not wrong, but Reese is beyond reason now. He digs through the drawer and finds what he's looking for.

"I'm all out of moves, Finch. Risk is all I've got left. I have to make the call."

Harold walks closer. "Why would he even agree to meet with you?"

John's dialed. They're doing this thing. While he waits for it to ring, he answers. "Because he'll be curious." Yes, he will indeed. Elias is ever curious.

Under a bridge at night, two men drag John along with a hood on his head and his arms tied behind him. Elias is waiting for him, always pleased to see him. It's going to be amusing, whatever John has going. They unhood him and John looks ahead, grim and serious.

Elias is smiling, of course. "John. It's good to see you again. So tell me, did you fall out with your boss? Are you looking for a job?" He cocks his head to the side. Something has to be up for John to suddenly show up in front of him again.

"I'm looking for help."

"From _me_?" Even Elias can't believe this play. "Why would I help you?" That's what Finch wanted to know.

"I saved your life."

Well, that's the right answer. "You did, didn't you?" And maybe if he'd made this request earlier, he would have done it happily. "But you also broke up a little family reunion that I had planned." Elias is always amused and impressed with John, but he's also very frustrated because when John gets in his way, he's a brick wall. "That was you, wasn't it?" John just sort of shrugs. As Elias says, shaking his head, "Honest to a fault." 

He could just kill him, of course, but John knows that as well as he does. If he was willing to come here like this, it can only be something very important to him, and yes, Elias is indeed curious. "What's this about?"

"Someone kidnapped a child. Murdered her mother." Elias blinks. That's a little close to home for him but he shrugs, uncaring or at least wishing to look that way. John makes it explicit. "Just like Moretti murdered your mother, stole your childhood."

"I survived." Did you, though, Carl?

"This child won't. She's six months old. A baby. I know you're aiming to take over this city. But to control it, you need rules. People start targeting children, there are no rules. No winners."

Elias respects John, respects his understanding of the world. He's not wrong. But nothing comes without a cost. "Who's behind the kidnapping?"

"Eastern Europeans. They've been paid to get the baby out of the country. And they're moving her tonight."

Elias looks over to his right hand man, Mr. Scarface, who raises his eyebrows. "Their remit doesn't extend south of Jersey. They'll hand it off to the Mexicans. They're the people smugglers."

"A handoff like that... you can find out where it's happening. And you can get me there." Elias looks at him, deep into him, deciding.

Scarface drops John off in some back alley somewhere. "Hand-over's at 1637 Camden. You might get there in time." If John has to grow wings, he will get there in time. Getting there in time is all John lives for now. His weapons get tossed back at him through the window. "I would have just shot you. But the boss has got a soft spot for you." And he's gone. So is Reese.

The sun comes up in the morning, and it's time for the exchange in some industrial nowhere. Two black vehicles pull up, an SUV and the van from earlier. They flash their lights at each other. This is it. One of the kidnappers gets out of the van with that black duffle bag Finch saw back at the clinic. Leila whimpers inside it.

It's a tense meeting. The kidnappers have two bags, one with money, the other an infant. The men they're meeting have nothing but guns at the ready. They're about to start talking when a brown old 80s van comes rolling out of a warehouse next to them. Both sides fire on it and it comes to a halt crashing into a dumpster.

"There's no one in it!" one shouts. "Over there!" screams another. 

They fire at the shadow they see by the building, but it's no use. One falls with a bullet to the knee, followed by another. Leila is fully crying by now. Down to only one of the kidnappers and one of the smugglers, John finally emerges from the shadows, gun drawn. 

"Last chance. Put your weapons down and walk away." He fires at their feet to show them he's serious.

"All right, whatever you say, man!" The smuggler drops his gun and grabs his groaning buddy off the ground to leave. That leaves just one. The only one that matters.

"Stop! I have the baby. I said stop!" He holds up the bag beside his handgun aimed at John. But John keeps coming, his own gun out and ready. 

"Put the bag down."

"No," he says as the kidnappers squeal their tires driving away from this disaster as quickly as they can. "You'd just shoot me."

"You're right," John says, and puts a bullet right between his eyes. The man crumples and the bag ends up on top of his lifeless body, cushioning the fall. John goes over and kneels, sitting his gun down beside him. Leila is bawling in the half-open bag. He delicately tries to uncover her from it.

"It's okay, Leila. You're okay," he says softly to her. "I got you." Finch is listening from the library, pacing back and forth with his arms folded tight across himself, having half a heart attack. 

John takes Leila up in his arms and she's calmer there by his shoulder. He taps his com and cradles the baby's head. "Finch, I've got Leila. I'm bringing her back." He sounds stressed and exhausted, not even relieved yet. "She's okay," he says, although she's started fussing again. "Won't be long, huh?" he says to her. 

But yeah, it will be. Because Scarface comes up from the side and puts a gun to John's head. "Sorry. Boss had a change of heart." 

In the library, Finch's jaw drops open. "John?"

But John can't answer, because his phone has been summarily crushed on the concrete under Scarface's boot. Finch's screen blinks. CONNECTION LOST.

Things are going from bad to worse. Scarface handcuffs John to a pole in the back of a box truck. 

"What have you done with the baby?" is the only thing John wants to know. 

Elias strolls up with Leila held in a blanket in his arms. "She's right here, John." 

"We had an agreement." Leila is crying, pawing at Elias' face. 

"But then I realized there is something you can do for me. Tell me where Moretti is."

"I don't know." Yeah, Elias isn't buying that. He hands the baby off to Scarface, who brings her up into the truck.

"This is a refrigerated truck, John." They fire it up, and the cooling system kicks on in high gear. "It will get very cold in there very quickly." It's already not warm, less than 50 according to the thermometer. It's winter. "Now, you'll be able to hold off for a few hours, I imagine. But this little one, on the other hand..."

"Elias..."

"Just shout if you change your mind." They've left him with a baby monitor. Appropriate and literally chilling.

"Don't do this." The baby is screaming, up on her hands and knees. "Elias. Elias!" But he's walking away, and Scarface is pulling the door shut on them. 

Fusco's making some copies in the station and Simmons is back, testy as ever. "Anything on Carter yet?"

"I followed her," he says honestly. "Learned something." She sees him across the way, waves. His heart sinks.

"What? What'd you learn?"

"She, um..." He watches her, always working hard, always doing her best, standing at her desk. "She had a pizza. She got a thing for pepperoni." He can't turn her in. Whatever Simmons does to him, he can't bend and let him hurt her. He looks at Simmons, defiant. Lionel's grown a lot over these last few months.

"And I got a dead body with your name on it. Don't think I won't use it. Find out where she's got Moretti." Fusco's between a rock and a hard place.

John, on the other hand, is rapidly freezing to death. Leila is still screaming, and it's already dropped to 30, below freezing. The baby is bobbling about on the cold metal floor.

"Just hold on, Leila. Please." He puts all of his energy into dislodging the metal pole he's cuffed to, yanking it back and forth. It doesn't budge. His wrists are getting completely torn up, but that is not even a consideration. Making no progress, he screams in frustration and fear.

At the station, Carter comes up to her partner. "Hey, Fusco. Crime lab came through. Want to go arrest Claudia Cruz's murderer?"

Lionel half smiles. This is the part of the job he loves and he gets to do it with one of the best cops he's ever met. "Yeah, sure, why not?"

But her phone rings. "One second, I gotta take this."

It's Finch, in the car, frantic. "Detective. John recovered the baby but then I lost him."

"Lost him? _And_ the baby?" She knew this was going to end in disaster.

"Last known location, 1637 Camden in Brooklyn. Anything you can do, Detective. _Please_." Poor Finch.

"Okay." She hangs up. Fusco's watching her, trying to read her. "Sorry, Lionel, something's come up." Did she start calling him Lionel after he got shot saving a kid's life? Aww. She hands him the info she's got. "Nicola Petrosian. She's all yours." And Carter's gone, half running.

In the box truck, everyone is slowed now and cold. John's still intermittently trying with the pole, but he's sitting now, unable to stand. Leila's quiet, lying on her blanket. He watches the small puffs of her breath. They're slowing. 

He drags himself back to his feet and tries again at jerking the pole free. It's jiggling at the bolts now. He has jostled it, and finally it comes free. Leila's crying again at the noise, rolling and screaming. He gets the pole down and slides his cuffs off it so he can run to her. 

If his hands were free, he would just grab her, but he can't. He can only wrap himself around her, pulling his bound hands over her head. "Come here, come on, baby." He leans back so she falls against his chest and he holds her close to his own warmth, rocking her and resting his cheek on her little head.

Finch gets to John's last known location and he's absolutely horrified by what he finds. He'd heard it, but it's something else to see it. He stumbles out of the car, not even bothering to close the door. Two dead men lie scattered. On one of them, a bag with a soft pink blanket inside lies open. Harold looks around, his head still bruised and cut from where he'd been hit the night before. There's nothing to find here. There's no one still breathing to see. There is only smashed metal, broken glass, and death.

John is hypothermic in the truck, holding Leila to him wrapped in her blanket. She's gone completely still against him. He bangs his head in frustration against the side of the truck. Beside him, the baby monitor light blinks green over and over. Elias is waiting. All he has to do is answer. He hugs her tightly to him. His wrists are destroyed, his lips are turning blue. 

"Elias..." he says at last, weak and defeated. "Elias."

"Yes, John?" He's so casual. He truly is a sociopath. 

"All right. You win."

"We both win, John. Where's Moretti?"

John throws his head against the truck again. It's killing him to bow to this. It's against every ethic he has. But Leila is lying against him, dying in his arms. There's nothing he can do.

"What guarantee do I have?" His voice is weak, breathy. He's waited too long for the both of them to give into this.

"You don't."

John curls himself up around the baby. And admits defeat. "1465 Jefferson. Queens."

"Thank you, John. You were right. I would never harm a child." What? He already has! She could be dead already! "But then, I knew you wouldn't either." Using John's innate decency against him is absolutely crushing. "Goodbye, John."

"Elias! Elias!" He screams, shivering. He can't just leave them there, he can't, he can't.

He doesn't. A key drops down in the truck. It's the key to his cuffs. He rushes to it and puts the baby down gently to unlock himself. His cuffs are bloody from his mangled wrists, but there's still more work to do. He takes the pole he'd been cuffed to and uses it as a wedge, banging it against the latch holding the door closed. Finally, it comes loose, and he groans with the effort of pulling the heavy door open with his weakened muscles. Light from the day outside pours inside, blinding.

He rushes out with Leila clutched to him and climbs with her into the cab of the truck. He fires it up and cranks the heat as he rocks her and begs her to come back around to him.

"Come on, baby." He takes her tiny hands into his own and blows on them. "Cry. Cry," he begs her. With her still against his chest, he puts the truck in gear and rolls forward. No matter what, he has to find help for her.

Finch has finally found him, and they almost collide in their respective vehicles, screeching their tires to a halt. They both get out, panicked.

"Leila's in the truck," John says, his voice still strained. "I gotta take your car."

"What on earth happened?"

"Elias happened." It's exactly why Harold told him not to make a deal with the devil. 

Finch climbs into the cab of the truck. The heat's still blaring, but at least Leila's pinking up now, crying on the seat. We don't get to see what happens with them, because John is still desperate to stop another disaster of his own making.

Carter's phone rings in her car. It's John, of course. "Elias knows where Moretti is."

She can only shake her head. "How does he _know_?"

"I'm on my way. Just get over there."

She's instantly back on the phone with Szymanski. "We've been blown. Get Moretti out of there. _Now!_ "

At the safehouse, Szymanski's knocking on the door. He wasn't inside? "Gianni! It's Szymanski! Open up!"

Gianni's completely hammered. "Just in time for a drink, my fri–"

"'Fraid not. Carter says we've got to move. Quick. Get your stuff." Who cares about your stuff, just get out of there!

John is beside himself with regret in the car, driving too fast, still not fully recovered from the cold. And who knows how long it's been since he slept.

Finch has the baby with him back safe in the library. She's in his arms, wrapped in a peach blanket, reaching and holding his shoulder as he limps forward. He sounds scared over the line. 

"Are you there, Mr. Reese?"

"I'm here, so is Carter." She's digging in drawers, and he looks down and knows why. "Oh, no."

Szymanski is on the floor clutching his stomach. He's been shot. Gianni is gone. Carter calls in for help and the two of them try to save him. "I repeat, officer down!" she screams into the walkie talkie. Szymanski's breath is shaky, he's fading out.

"Moretti?" John asks, but he knows the answer.

"They got him. How did Elias know?"

"I told him." Honest to a fault. "I had to give up the safehouse to save the baby."

She shakes her head. "John, why were you even talking to Elias?"

"I had no choice," he whispers. "We lost the kid." Finch is listening to all of this holding Leila in the library. It's all so horrible, and there's nothing at all he can do.

"You said there was no choice, but there was, John. It's called the police. It's what we do." To be fair, Carter, the police wouldn't have had any ability to deal with this either, but it's no consolation and John doesn't try. She shakes her head, upset, still looking at Szymanski dying in front of her. "I can't do this anymore. I can't. You and, and your friend. I'm sorry." 

Finch, listening, is sorry too. He understands, even if John will struggle with it. Beside him, Leila's little hands clutch at his lapel.

At the safehouse, the sirens start approaching. "Go on," she says. "This place will be swarming." He looks at her, frozen. "Go. Go!" Finally, he does.

It's night now. Finch carefully pulls Leila's carrier from the back of the car. Reese steps out from the driver's side. Finch carries their littlest number over to him to make their goodbyes. She smiles toothlessly at him, her little chubby cheeks so round. John waves, and shakes her tiny hand with his fingers. 

"Bye, Leila." She pulls her hand back and stuffs it into her mouth.

Finch pulls her away and limps her over to her grandparents, who are overwhelmed waiting to meet her. He hands them the carrier, and looks down at the baby he's spent days and nights caring for. "You be a good girl," he says quietly. Everyone is almost crying. The grandparents thank him, but he just nods and walks back to the car. 

John's still staring forward, watching them go. "Be nice to have a child," he says, feeling empty. "Children. Think that'll ever happen?"

Finch shrugs and only turns around when he knows they're inside and it's fully done. Leila is safe and with her family forever. 

"Probably not." John answers his own question. "Our line of work." They watch the grandparents through the window holding Leila up, overjoyed at this beautiful little piece of their daughter alive in their arms.

"The trouble with children," Finch says, "you never know how they're going to turn out." He walks away. His only child has been an incredible blessing. And a nightmarish curse.

At that same spot under the bridge from before, Scarface is bringing another hooded man up to meet Elias. They pull off the sack and Moretti meets his kidnapper at last.

"Hello, Dad." This is not the warmest father and son reunion. They stare at each other, knowing they would both each gladly kill the other.

* * *

#### Thoughts

  * Harold and John are both pretty wrecked after this. John's wrists are torn to shreds and he's still coming off hypothermia. Harold's had a very probable concussion and still has a nasty bruise on his head. They're both still upset from having Leila – this sweet baby representing all they can never have – with them, losing her, then finding her again only at such extreme cost. Szymanski's a good cop, and he might well be dead. Carter is heartbroken over it and won't work with them anymore. It's a lot to deal with. John wouldn't want to take care of himself, too self-punishing for that. But he might have some concern for Finch. Both of them would be crushed. Leila has a happy home, but everyone else is destroyed.




	19. POI 1x18 - Identity Crisis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the latest number appears to be two people, the FBI starts their search for the Man in the Suit, and Finch has to be saved from himself and a hefty dose of ecstasy.

### POI 1x18 - Identity Crisis

#### Landmarks

  * Agent Donnelly from the FBI arrives with a task force to find the Man In The Suit
  * Drugged Finch offers to tell John anything he wants to know but John won't take advantage of him like that
  * In his haze, Harold mistakes John for Nathan and John might have heard it
  * Fusco saves Finch's life when he's nearly exploded with a microwave oven bomb



#### Injuries

  * **Finch**
    * Heavily drugged with ecstasy



* * *

We're starting in the library. John's coming in looking cool in his long coat with the collar turned up. He's bearing gifts, hot drinks for the both of them, and a pink box of donuts. Finch is already at work and seems already grumpy. He's standing at the glass with his arms folded, looking dissatisfied at the documents he has posted there. 

"Good morning, Mr. Reese."

"If you say so." John hands over the box.

"Any croquillant in there?"

"If that's a donut, then yes." Finch opens the box to see what is the closest to whatever French pastry nonsense he asked for. "So... what do we got?"

"Nothing much, unfortunately. The Machine kicked out a number that has one of the smallest digital footprints I've ever seen." He takes a big bite of the plain cake donut he picked and John takes a swig of his coffee then a seat in Finch's chair.

"No photos?"

"Not everyone in New York has a driver's license, Mr. Reese." Finch squints at the board. "First three digits of the Social suggest that Jordan Hester was born in Georgia."

"I'm supposed to recognize him by his accent?"

"Or her. I can't even verify the gender."

"Hester's living off the grid. No photos online, and nothing on the social networking sites."

"Never understood why people put all their information on those sites. Used to make our job a lot easier in the CIA."

"Of course. That's why I created them." !!!

"You're telling me you invented online social networking, Finch?" John gets out of the chair. That's quite a claim. 

Finch shrugs, still with his donut with exactly one bite out of it, and sits back down where John just left. "The Machine needed more information. People's social graph... their associations... the government had been trying to figure it out for _years_. Turns out most people were happy to _volunteer_ it." He casts his eyes up. "Business wound up being quite profitable too." 

He's got up what he has on their number, the little he's been able to dig up. "Unfortunately, Jordan Hester seems to be more cautious than most. But I was able to run a credit check."

John looks at the posted documents. "According to this, Hester's got two of everything. Two bank accounts, two apartments, two phone bills."

"If I _had_ to guess, which, as you know, I hate doing..." Of course he does. You cannot make bricks without clay, as another standoffish genius once said. "...I'd say we're looking at a person leading a double life."

"Can't cover 'em both." He takes Finch's coat off the rack. "Time for you to get some fresh air." John seems remarkably confident he isn't sending Harold into an instant shootout or something similarly deadly he's 100% unprepared for. "I'll call Carter, see if our guy – or _girl_ – has a criminal record." He dials.

"Is that a good idea? Detective Carter's not exactly your number one fan right now." Finch has better instincts with women than Reese does in some ways. People in general to a certain degree. Does John not remember how torn up Carter was the last time they spoke, over the body of gutshot and unconscious Szymanski? Exactly how does he think this is going to go?

At a crime scene, she sees he's calling and just hits decline. She looks good with her long hair pulled back in a sharp ponytail. As soon as she's under the tape going into some under bridge space in the park, there's some smarmy guy with his arms out. Another man for her to scoff at.

"Lo and behold, Detective Carter at an _actual_ homicide investigation." _Go screw yourself buddy._ She says it with her eyes if nothing else. "What, are you tired of chasing around your mystery man?"

She ignores the bullshit. She has actual work to do. "What do we got?" she says, just like John. The scene is bleak. Dead kid, only 17, shot by some other boy in an argument over a girl. The other jerk cop calls it open and closed, but Carter wants to know why he said he did it.

"He said, and I quote, "What was I supposed to do?" And then he said, it was our fault."

"Yeah? How does that follow?"

"Said we weren't here to stop him." Oof. That's the wrong thing to say to Carter today after she's given up the prevention mission she'd been on with Reese and Finch. She looks a bit stricken by it. 

Her phone rings again. _Number Withheld._ She declines it, but there's only death around her when she turns back. This boy shot through the heart gets covered up on the cold ground. Nearby, a girl weeps. "I tried to stop it," she says between sobs. "There was nothing I could do." There was something Carter could do. But she gave that work up.

John and Harold are out on their parallel missions. "I'm at the apartment in the Village, Mr. Reese. Are you at the one in Brooklyn?"

"Yep." They're both wandering around in front of expensive looking New York stone buildings.

"Any sign of Hester at your location?"

"It would help if I knew what I was looking for."

Finch uses his disability to his advantage. He limps much more than he does in his normal life and hauls himself up the couple of steps to the front entrance with struggling, tired breaths when he sees someone at the door. The instant she opens it, he pops though, limping like his leg was dead. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

John's managing his entry the more manual way, with a bump key like the one he gave Finch. "Last one in pays for lunch." Either way, Harold's paying for it in the end.

"I'm in the mood for Indian." Sounds delicious. "Any response from Detective Carter?"

"Still not answering my calls. Maybe you should try her."

"You know, Carter's issue isn't with you, Mr. Reese," he says as he uses some app on his phone to pop an electronic lock. "It's with your methods." The door springs open and he peers inside at the apartment he's halfway through committing B&E in. "Our methods," he adds with honesty. Inside, he's still talking. What if this person is home, Finch? "Not to mention the fact that you gave up a witness under her protection and nearly got a cop _killed_ in the process."

"Nobody's perfect, Finch." Jesus, John. People's lives matter. They have to or what is the point? 

"This is very bohemian. Maybe Hester's an artist or a writer. No photos, though." The place is super bland in the fancy kind of bland way. Not exactly the common understanding of Bohemian. "What are you seeing?" 

"Well, it's very spartan." John is in a bro's place. The other house had live flowers. This one has clothes hung over a weight bench and a mattress laid directly on the floor. "Just a desk, mattress, some free weights. Not much else."

Finch's place is like a model home, but a fancy modern one. Weird egg shaped upholstered chair, vases. "Maybe it's Hester's office."

"In a different apartment building?" He pulls up something from a drawer. "Found a money roll with Hester's initials. Mostly small bills, though."

Finch leafs through bills of his own, the mailed variety in sealed envelopes. No one in movies or TV ever opens their mail.

"Just going through his garbage. I got some receipts." And Finch has a laptop, perfect. John's still talking. "The Hammer and Nail. That pub's just around the corner from here. Receipt shows an employee discount. Money could be from a tip pool. Finch, I'm going to check it out."

"If he lives and works in Brooklyn, what's this place for?" Harold opens the laptop to start digging in the real dirt. 

At the pub, the waitress comes over to Reese instantly. He's hard to miss. He asks for whatever's on tap, which I don't know would work at any bar in reality but always works at every bar on TV. While she's filling it, she yells to the back. "Hester! What's taking you so long?"

A man appears carrying two big boxes. "They were under a bunch of other boxes."

Well, that was pretty simple. "Finch, got eyes on Hester. He's working as a barback."

"Barback? How can he afford to keep up the rent on both places?" He's almost done doing his copying when he hears voices outside. Uh, oh. He slams the laptop shut and tries to get outside, but someone's already coming in. He dashes into a closet instead, hiding next to old clothes and a line of shoes. He turns around and realizes these are sparkly dresses, women's shoes.

Through the slats of the closet door he can see two people, a man and a woman talking about the weather. He's bringing in a box. "So, anything else I can do for you, Miss Hester?"

"No, and for the last time, Ray, please call me Jordan," she says. Uhhh...

Finch hits his com, whispers as low as he can, which really is too loud still but we're rolling with it. "Um, Mr. Reese... You may have eyes on Hester, but I have ears on her."

"What?"

"Jordan Hester. She's here in her apartment. This isn't one person living a double life..."

"It's two people living one."

Back at the library, Finch clearly made it out of the closet, but not unscathed. He looks miserable, soaked from head to toe. Even his shoes squeak wet with each of his steps. 

"Welcome back," John says over by the glass, now adorned with pictures of their number(s).

"I suppose I should thank you for making them evacuate the building."

John's so smug. He smirks and grabs the towel on the desk he's had waiting. Finch catches it out of the air from his toss. "Thank the automatic sprinkler system."

"So we still have no idea who Jordan Hester is." Finch is trying to rub his hair dry, but one towel is not going to help the fact that every single stitch of fabric on him is soaked and probably ruined.

"Well, at least we narrowed it down."

"Two people, one Social Security number. Only one can be Hester, so someone is an imposter."

"No telling who's who."

Finch drapes the towel around his neck and sits at his desk. He's going to get the chair all wet. "We'd better decide quickly." He adjusts his glasses. Been a long day already. "Usually when the Machine gives us a number, we have only 24 to 48 hours before something happens." Sometimes it's even less than that. It was with Carter's demonstration case and we've seen it with others.

John's got a good point. "Shouldn't we be able to track down a birth certificate for one of them?"

"Long form birth certificates are hard to get a hold of. Most medical records over 20 years old aren't digitized anywhere." Stupid hard copy files, the bane of Harold's existence. 

"We're not dealing with a typical identity thief here, are we?"

"No. Normally they would steal your money and go on a shopping spree. This one is stealing a whole life."

"Did you get anything from the woman's laptop?"

"Emails and contact list. Nothing that would indicate that she's not the real Jordan Hester."

"I bluejacked our guy's phone, went through his recent calls. Seems he rented a van last week."

"Maybe he's finally going to buy some furniture."

"We'll need to keep eyes on both of them til we figure this out."

"We're still going to need an extra hand." Harold looks over at the incongruous pictures of two people who could not be any less alike. "Will the real Jordan Hester _please_ stand up?"

At the Hammer and Nail, John's waiting with his back to the door. He doesn't need to turn around to know who's coming in. "Hello, Lionel." Poor Fusco. He's definitely been dirty, tried to kill John and all that, but he's really working to do the right thing now and gets nothing but absolute contempt from basically everyone. Only Carter treats him with any respect, and that's a very recent development.

Lionel's getting some free fries from the basket on the bar in front of John, so it's not a total loss, this day. 

"Nice job handing Moretti over to Elias."

John narrows his eyes. "I had no choice."

"Well, you got HR buzzing. Don't worry about it, though. I'm pretty close to finding out who the major players are." 

"I didn't ask you here to talk about HR. I've got an assignment for you. I need you to dig up everything you can on a Jordan Hester." Hey, is it really a good idea to be having this conversation in a bar where one of the Jordans works? Nobody has any ability to hear on this show.

"You got me doing undercover work for HR. Now you want me to do above-the-board stuff too?" Fusco's confused, but yeah, basically yes. He has to do whatever John says because this is the only way either of them can redeem themselves. "Make up your mind!"

John's hands are folded together in front of him, faux calm. "I didn't realize it was my job to make yours easier, Lionel."

"Hey, good cop, bad cop, it's only my life we're playing with here." Toeing this invisible line wears on Fusco constantly.

John drops his hands. "It's not your life I'm focused on right now, is it?" He's got Fusco there, because the man genuinely wants to do some good in his life, and this is a way, no matter how annoying, that he can reliably do that. John passes over a piece of paper on the bar. "Someone needs our help."

It's actually two photos, both of the Hesters. "Which one?"

"Exactly."

 _Great_ , he thinks. What's next with these weirdos? "I'll see what I can do." He leaves and John goes back to watching the barman move glassware around.

"Hey, Finch. What's your Hester up to?"

She's coming out of the subway. "Six hours, and all she's done is run errands." Finch comes out too once she's half a block down. "Probably go to the post office next."

"My Hester's still at work."

"So we're dealing with the two most ordinary people on the planet."

"Except one of them is not what they seem."

"I did some more digging in that credit report, found something interesting." It's sprinkling where Finch is walking and he's got his black umbrella up. There are a few around but most people like his Hester haven't bothered yet. "Luxury co-op on the Upper West Side ordered a credit check six months ago. Might be worth a look."

John looks really unhappy about this. "You're not telling me there's a third Jordan Hester, are you?"

"I don't think so. One of our Hesters rented a large apartment there. But the man at the front desk says he's never met him. Or _her_."

"Well, my Hester's still in the middle of his shift. I'll check it out."

At the station, Fusco's not exactly being secretive about his work tracking the Hesters. He's got both of the photos up on his desk together. He's got his glasses on as he searches.

"You pull a double homicide?" Carter asks, walking by. She's wearing a black jacket over a v neck sweater over a white dress shirt opened at the collar. It's very reminiscent of John's clothes, only a feminine version of it. Subconsciously or not, even while she's refusing to speak to him, she's still emulating him.

"I'm just doing a favor for a friend over at Vice." He squints at her through those little glasses. "Did you work an identity theft case?"

"Every arrest I ever made." She smiles. "They all say I got the wrong guy." He chuckles. He's really starting to like her. 

But she's not happy today. "Must be nice, helping out people who are still alive." She's got the photos from that awful pointless murder of the 17 year old she's working. It's all so futile.

He looks her over. He's divorced now, but he was married. He knows when a woman is upset. "Everything okay?"

It's clearly not. And maybe she'd try to talk about it with him, but she (and we) have someone new to meet.

"Detective Carter. I'm Special Agent Donnelly."

"What brings you back to the A?"

"You, actually." He takes her into a quiet room, drops a stuffed file marked John Doe to the table.

"What's this about?"

John's fingerprints in the system that Carter ran so long ago caught the FBI's attention. "In your reports, you refer to him as The Man in the Suit." Shit. She stays cool, but even when she's not working with him, John never stops bringing her trouble. "We think this may be the same man who assaulted my team and kidnapped a suspect in our custody." 

"The way I remember it, the suspect was later cleared of all charges."

"That's beside the point, Detective." He's not wrong. Vigilantism is still illegal, even if it's ethically right. She purses her lips. This is going to be ugly. 

"Now our agents believe that this man may be connected to dozens of unsolved homicides and assaults over the years. Many of them here in New York in the last six months." He starts bringing out photos. Again, he's not wrong that John was involved and yes, some of these people he killed. Not most of them, but some. "A series of bank robberies involving ex-military, killing of a Stasi operative, shootings of drug dealers, gangsters, even police officers." It's a litany. She says nothing.

"Now you speculated based on your initial interview with this man, that he was former military, maybe special forces."

"It's all in my reports."

"No. No, it's not. Not by a long shot. When can you spare me an hour, Detective? I've got something to show you." Oh, fabulous. He locks his folder away in his briefcase and she tries to think about what's going to happen next.

At the fancy co-op, John offers to help a older woman with her grocery bags to get in the door past the doorman. Easy peasy.

"I'm taking a look at this third apartment, Finch."

Finch is pressing him to find something identifiable inside. "We're running out of time. We need to find out where the threat's coming from." Yeah, he knows how this works, Finch.

John picks the lock and cautiously walks inside. Starts out looking like just a fancy apartment, but the further in he gets, more details reveal themselves. A table filled with metal trays holding multicolored tiny objects. Pills, and a lot of them. Ten different trays, ten different colors. Up from that, there's an entire lab set up that's clearly been used. Chemicals, glassware, tubes. 

"Don't know which Hester it belongs to, but I got an idea what they're mixed up in." One of the bottles is still bubbling in the back. Don't leave your bunsen burner on, people. "I'm standing in the middle of an MDMA lab."

"Ecstasy... Are you sure?"

"Well, either that or someone's really into chemistry." The lab is well stocked, pretty big for just sitting in the middle of an apartment. 

Oops, John wasn't careful enough and didn't add up the thought that if something is bubbling, that means someone is here cooking. A man with a goatee comes out swinging with a knife. John clocks him out with one hit of the heel of his hand to the man's chin. He drops to the hardwood floor with a clatter and his knife skitters away.

Reese is always so relaxed about these things. A man just tried to kill him with a knife to the head and he had to knock him out, but he's totally chill now when he reports back in. "Found a guy who can tell us what's going on. But, uh, he's not really in a talking mood right now." John kneels by the man's body, picks up his phone. Uh, oh. He was on a call on speaker the whole time. "Looks like I'm going to have more company soon." A voice on the line says hello, but John just says goodbye and hangs up.

Out on the street, Finch is awful at this tailing work. His Hester stops in front of a store window to look at a jacket and he almost just walks directly into her. That would almost be better than what he does instead, which is stop awkwardly, almost turn around, decide against it and turn back her way, and then try to walk past her. 

He seems pretty relaxed somehow too or at least he's taking advantage of the fact nobody can hear anything in this universe. He's ten feet past her when he chimes back in to Reese. "At least we know why our ID thief stole Hester's name." It's not raining anymore, so his fancy umbrella's handle is hanging on his arm. "MDMA can be made with legal chemicals, but they're monitored. Buy in bulk, and you draw the attention of the authorities."

John bluejacks his latest victim's phone while he's still unconscious. 

"But... if you use someone else's name..."

"They wind up holding the bag."

Finch is looking through his Hester's phone since he's bluejacked her of course. "Look like your Hester's not the only one who's employed. Jordan's emails indicate she works in antiques." And she's coming up behind you, you idiot. "Maybe as a buyer, or a dealer..."

Meanwhile, John's still in the lab, setting up for the arrival of the drug gang cavalry. He'll have eyes in the place now.

" _Jordan_?" John asks. "Are you on a first name basis already?"

"No! I'm just... tired of using pronouns." He looks around himself up from his phone. She's gone. Crap. He takes off.

By the time John's cook wakes up with one of his friends, John's watching the video from his phone. Friend is happy their mystery man didn't take anything, but the cook is still worried. 

"We got a bigger problem right now. The boss wants to meet."

"What? Four years and we've never even seen the boss. Why are we meeting him now?"

"I don't know. This can't be good. Come on, meeting's in an hour." This guy's taking getting clocked by John very well.

John calls in. "Hester's name is on the lease for that co-op. Odds are, either your Hester or mine is the boss. We need to stay close, Finch."

"Oh, dear. I think I just lost her." He's so bad at this. He wanders into a bookshop, still looking. He's drawn to the glass case of rarities and antiquities, of course. But then, so is she. OOPS. 

"Ah, sometimes I wonder if he'd be published today," she says.

He's holding a vintage copy of Kafka's _The Trial_. How did he get the case open to get to it? Do they just let customers touch their rarities freely at this store? The book still has its original jacket with only some cracking at the corners. Otherwise, it's still beautiful, original color unfaded.

He's frozen for a moment, but she smiles at him, and so he just starts talking as he would anyone. "I'd be first in line... but then meandering exposition is kind of my thing." I love him so much. 

She does too. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude."

"Oh, no!" he says, worried she's offended. "I'm Harold." He offers her his hand. This is extremely bad field work, of course, but it's far too late now.

"Jordan." Yeah, he knows. They're smiling at each other when Finch's phone chimes and he excuses himself to answer it. 

He's quiet when he answers with his back to her. "Why are you calling me?" he asks as if it's any kind of question.

"Why are you talking to her?"

"Because I haven't your gift for avoiding people. Besides, she seems nice, and she has excellent taste in literature."

"Or she knows you're tailing her and she circled back for a closer look." John's Hester's about to get off work, so he has tailing of his own to do, only he won't get made doing it. 

Finch's Hester's left the store, so he's got catching up to do himself. He hurries back outside and sees the curls of her blonde hair over her black coat as she's walking away. And he also sees two sketchy dirtbags eyeing her and moving to follow her too.

"Mr. Reese, what did that drug cook look like?" He's standing with his umbrella up with wide eyes, trying to decide what to do. "Like, big, kind of... terrifying?" The men are so close to her now. 

"Not even close." Not by John's standards. You've got to be truly huge for that. He's watching his own Hester being sketchy himself by the back of a box truck.

Finch is walking forward now toward her. "If we've mistaken this woman for a drug dealer, isn't it possible that someone else has too?" The men are absolutely following her, almost in arm's reach.

"Anything's possible, Finch. Did you bring a weapon?" Another question that's not really a question. Of course he doesn't have a weapon. What would he even do with it?

"I told you, Mr. Reese. I _don't_ like weapons." 

John sighs. Weapons make everything so much easier in his experience. "Well, you better be prepared to talk them to death, and you'd better do it fast, because I think I know which one of them is the imposter." The cook and his buddy have just come up to meet John's Hester. Great. Now they both have their hands full. "Which means your Hester's in trouble."

Finch lowers his umbrella and stares forward, his face slack, serious, afraid, determined. He'll have to find a way protect her peacefully but he's a clever man who thinks well on his feet. He drops the umbrella and starts shrugging off his coat as fast as he can in the middle of the sidewalk. He hurries, limping up to her, smiling.

"Jordan!" He holds his coat out ahead of him. "You forgot your jacket." She turns around confused and sees the creeps just behind her. He puts the coat in her hands and takes her elbow to lean in and whisper, all the while smiling in as friendly and relaxed a way as he can muster. "You're in danger. Come with me." He leads her away, holding her arm in a protective grip.

"Who were those guys?"

"Don't look back," he says still with the fake smile on his face as she tries to turn her head. "Just keep walking." 

The whole sequence is lovely and tragic in a way. Harold actually got to chat a little with a woman he's a bit attracted to, surely not a common occurrence, and then he almost watches her get kidnapped or killed. He only works peacefully, so although he's scared, and he's always scared, he does it anyway. He walks up between extremely dangerous men to insert himself in the situation and try to save her. Finch is always that kind of brave. Being afraid and doing it anyway.

At John's meeting of the drug dealers, the cooks are curious why they're meeting in person.

"Someone's onto us," says this Hester. "We need to finish this batch and relocate." No kidding someone's onto them. Are they going to tell him about a man breaking into the lab and attacking someone?

The cooks say they're low on some chemical, but Guy Hester opens the box truck to reveal a bunch of blue barrels.

"Looks like we know who's who," John says. "My guy's the drug dealer."

Finch is putting his Girl Hester into a cab. "And your drug dealer has placed the real Jordan Hester in danger." He gets in next to her.

The Machine and John watch the drug guys get the barrels and take them up to the co-op. Reese's phone chimes.

"Hello, Lionel." He always says it like it's dripping with oil.

"Hey, I think your guy might be cooking ecstasy." Ah, thanks.

John's all sarcasm. "Is that so?"

"He got arrested six months ago when one of his distributors got popped. Narcotics found evidence that he was buying chemicals, but the distributor couldn't pick him out of a lineup, so they had to cut Hester loose." John's watching those chemicals roll into an elevator on a hand truck. "All the distributor knew was a name. He had actually never met the boss." Speaking of the devil, he gets John's attention and concern when he tucks a gun into the front of his pants. "So if that's it, then maybe I can just go back to doing one job for you, huh?"

"Not just yet. Hester, or whatever his name is, is very serious about protecting his identity. Maybe serious enough to kill."

You can see the little lightbulb buzz on over Fusco's head. He looks down at the picture of Girl Hester. "You think he'd go after the girl?"

"That's what I need to know, which means _you_ need to find out how he stole her identity."

Finch and Girl Hester are having some expensive lunch now in a restaurant. It's much better than John's stakeout in the cold. 

"But who were those guys?"

"I'm afraid they may be in the drug trade, and they think you are too."

She leans in over the table. "That's who stole my identity? A drug dealer?"

"So you know about the ID theft."

She nods. "I've known for a few weeks, but I think it's been going on for months. I kept calling my credit card company, my bank. They kept telling me to call the police. The cops just kept telling me to fill out more reports and call the bank." 

Finch shakes his head. "White collar crime is at the bottom of every police department's to-do list."

"Well, I take it you're not a cop." He's about as far away as you can get.

He tosses his head. "Not quite." He brings out a business card. _Harold Crow, private investigator._

"Private investigator?" It's honestly as good a title as any. Vigilante software engineer doesn't have quite the same ring.

He's amused. "It's very Raymond Chandler, isn't it?" He's so delighted he gets to talk to a smart, beautiful woman who will get all of his references to literature. "The reality is a little bit more mundane, I'm afraid. Mostly following people around and taking pictures." 

"Why were you following _me_?" Good question.

"I've been hired by another victim. The police didn't do anything for him either." 

She looks lost. "So what do I do now?"

"Right now? Breathe deep, have a cup of tea." She's in this ludicrously fancy restaurant over Columbus Circle and he's paying, so she might as well. She takes his advice, the first part, anyway. "I have someone keeping an eye on the man who stole your identity. As soon as we have enough proof to arrest him, we'll get the police involved."

Elsewhere at a much less swanky joint, some kind of diner or maybe Chinese buffet, Lionel's meeting a guy. "You Franklin?"

"You must be Fusco. Detective Dez Franklin, ID theft squad." Hey, it's the guy who works the bottom of the to-do list himself. "How can I help?"

He points over at the photos, explains about Girl Hester and Guy Hester.

"A man stealing a woman's identity. That's a new one."

"Yeah, apparently it's been going on for about a year now."

"A year? So we're not talking about a shopping spree at Best Buy. He's using her identity as a cover for criminal activity, right?"

"We think he's cooking E."

"Seriously?"

"Why do you find that so strange?"

"This case last year. Suspect claimed he was innocent all the way through trial, said somebody stole his identity."

"No one believed him?" Have you talked to cops anytime recently? 

"My unit catches upwards of 100 new complaints every day. Can't bring us in every time somebody says he didn't do it." Yep, that's what Carter said.

"What was the charge?"

"Manufacture with intent. Making ecstasy." Fusco gives him a quizzical eye. "Kyle Morrison. I'm pretty sure he's still locked up."

At another table, a waitress takes a credit card for the receipt and quietly scans it on a skimmer on her waist. "That's my cue," Franklin says. He has work of his own to do, and Fusco has a criminal – or maybe not – to meet.

Reese is a little bit testy about being out on the ugly end of the case while his boss is somewhere warm having a nice meal and a chat. "Hope you're enjoying your tea, Finch. I'm going to take a closer look at Hester's van." He just strolls up and brings out his slim jim and pops the lock in one smooth motion. Inside, he finds paydirt. "Ah, guy takes his computer with him everywhere." They're both in the wrong places for their skills at the moment, although Finch found his way out of a dangerous near kidnapping and John will just have to work out how to get the info off this laptop. "He's even more careful than you are, Finch." 

John opens the computer. "I might need a little help cracking his..." And the OS just pops right up. It's already unlocked. "Never mind. Laptop's not password protected. Guess he's not as careful as I thought, Finch." 

Finch is still at tea with his Jordan, listening and trying to keep her company. 

John brings up a file browser for the documents folder. Despite the fact it looks like there may be hundreds of documents and not everyone keeps their info that way, John feels confident enough to announce while still scrolling, "Not seeing any secret accounts full of drug profits or messages about business." Instead, he has browser pages up on making MDMA, one from a drug wiki clone called theundergroundlaboratory.web and the other an equipment list from clandestinechemists.web, both of which are hilarious. 

But it's pretty strange that a high level drug dealer would need that. John's eyebrows scrunch as he keeps digging. He's into the video history now, and it's a series of instructional clips on how to use a gun and shoot it. Uhhh... 

"And since when do seasoned drug dealers need how-to tips from the internet?"

Finch is considering that over when his Jordan gasps, looking at her phone that just beeped. "Oh, I missed a client meeting."

"What do you do for a living?" Shouldn't you already know, Mr. P.I.?

"Technically, I'm a freelance buyer, but no one really knows what that means."

"Buyer of what?"

"Antiques. You know, I love old stuff."

"Like books." Oh, poor sweet Finch. He's so desperate for human connection.

"Especially books." He smiles at her, in that sincerely happy way he so very rarely does, his eyes sparkling. We may have only seen this before with Will. "I can't really afford to buy the stuff I like, so, people hire me and I buy old stuff for them. Kind of like an interior decorator with cobwebs."

Oh, he's just killing me. His head is tilted a little, interested, welcoming her to talk more. "Sounds like fun."

And she's smiling too, beautiful across the table, her eyes squinting about her cheeks, her blonde hair twisting down one shoulder. How long has it been for Finch since he's just sat down and chatted with a pretty woman? Since he flirted with anyone? Since he made a friend (other than the still hesitant companionship he has been building with Reese)?

"Well, it's an embarrassing use of an arts degree, but it's my dream." She looks around. They're over the park in winter, a mass of bare trees surrounded by towering stone. "You know, someday I'd love to own my own shop." He perks up a little at that sitting back. The things he could make possible. He daydreams. Maybe he'll help her when this is over. For a drop in the bucket, he can alter the courses of lives, fulfill lifelong dreams. He could do it for this lovely, intelligent woman perhaps. "That is, if this whole ID thing hasn't permanently ruined my credit, or I don't wind up dead." 

And that's the first real clue that something is wrong here, because she is incredibly relaxed about that idea, tossing it off. But she hides it well enough for half-smitten Finch, and she sips her tea. "Any idea when I can go home?" 

His face tenses in that way we're familiar with, not the relaxed way he had been. This is more of his life now, these kinds of thoughts, these kinds of assessments. "I think it's too dangerous right now. What if these guys figured out where you live? We should get you a hotel room." He's perhaps a little too excited about that last bit.

"Can I at least pack a bag?"

"I'm not sure that's wise."

"Even if you came with me?" Yes, even then, as he is completely unable to fight and has no capacity to stop a determined attacker. That's his partner's job. Ah, but Finch is too charmed, and he's going to let her talk him into it.

At the lab, Guy Jordan is overseeing all the colorful tic tacs on the table. He's pretty weird already. "So this is our entire next shipment?"

The chemist has opened one of the barrels he brought, and isn't overly pleased. "Where'd you get this stuff? Smells a little different."

"That's because it's even more pure." RIIIIIIIGHT. "Now let's start the cook."

John's lurking outside watching this on his phone, a black panther ready to pounce. 

Guy Jordan thinks this will take 24 hours or so, but the chemists laugh. "If my Nana was cooking it."

Fusco's visiting Kyle Morrison in prison. Kyle has bundled himself small in the metal chair. He's learned to be small in prison, inconspicuous.

"You're homicide? You guys think I _killed_ someone too?" He scoffs.

"That's not why I'm here."

"What, so you just want to... rub it in? Well, congratulations. You got me."

"I thought you didn't do it."

"I'm _not a drug dealer_. I've been saying that for a year, nobody's believed me yet. Once a suspect, always a suspect. Isn't that the official NYPD motto?"

Fusco fishes out a notepad from his inside pocket. "When did you know your identity was first stolen?"

"When the cops knocked down my door, put a shotgun to my head."

"And that was what? A year ago?"

Kyle can't believe this guy. "You know, the more I talked to you guys, the more you twisted my words around, so, you know, maybe today I'm not in the mood." He stands to call the guard to come get him, but Fusco plays his card.

"We think what happened to you may have happened to someone else." Kyle freezes. It's been so long since he had any good news or hope at all, he can't even process it anymore. "Sit down." Now Fusco's got his attention.

"Look, I know you got no reason to trust me. I know exactly how you feel. Everyone's got you wrong. Everyone thinks you're something that you're not, and you got no way to change their mind." 

Okay, Fusco, let's have a chat. Here's the thing. You may not be that something anymore, but unlike Kyle, you WERE. You were beyond just any dirty cop taking money on the side. You were comfortable murdering people to protect the racket, burying them in Oyster Bay. You tried to do it to John and you would have if he wasn't slipperier than a snake. You may have changed your heart since then, and that's wonderful, but it's a long way back from that.

"You help me catch this guy," Lionel says, "and I'll see about getting you out of here."

Poor Kyle. He is so damaged by this experience. This small kindness is the most he's had in a year of this hell. "You believe me?"

"Until you give me a reason not to."

Kyle's eyes well up. He looks down, remembering how his nightmare began. "When it... When it started, it was just the money. I'd call the bank, and then they'd close the account, but then another one would pop right back up." Fusco leans in, listening and connecting with this guy to get him to open up. "Before long, my credit was shot, my savings were gone, I couldn't pay my mortgage, I couldn't support my family. And then the cops came rolling up. You got kids?"

"My boy's nine," he says. 

Kyle shakes his head. "Missed my daughter's second birthday last month." The tears in his eyes are just holding on, as is he. "Her mother doesn't want anything to do with me anymore."

"Look, you help me catch this guy, and I'll do my best to get you home and see your little girl. I give you my word." At this point, that actually means something. He really will try. Lionel has come to love and crave that feeling in his heart when he can really help someone.

At the lab, the flasks are still bubbling, but now they're an ugly brown instead of the lightly clear colors they had been before. "Something's not right here."

Guy Jordan looks at his phone. "Dammit, we're out of time, the cops are on their way here right now."

"What? How?" Yeah, that's what Reese would like to know outside.

"Who cares? We gotta get this merch out of here fast."

"What about the cook?"

"Forget it, this lab is burned! Wipe everything down for prints. I'm gonna pack this stuff up." They do as they're told and Guy Jordan dumps all the multicolored pills into a bag.

Meanwhile, Finch and Girl Jordan have arrived at her place. He limps through her hallway ahead of her, keeping her behind him where it's safer, which is cute and sweet and useless. Piles of fabric are scattered all over the floor. There's the closet he hid in earlier. 

Harold looks around, checks in rooms for danger in the least useful way possible. John would be appalled. "It's okay." She's relieved. "Why are there towels everywhere?" 

"Oh, yeah, sprinkler system went off yesterday. Some idiot pulled the alarm."

"How odd," he says, amused inside. "I've arranged a hotel room for you." She's likely to be surprised at its quality. He'll try not to be too ostentatious, but he likes this woman, he's not going to put her up at some middling place. "If you want to collect your things."

"Uh, in a minute." 

"We really shouldn't _linger_ ," Finch says, understating the obvious as usual. 

"I know," she says, and he wanders into the room to find her over with her liquor, stored in crystal decanters because of course it is. "But after the day I've had, I could use something stronger than tea." _Hey, your hotel will have a fine minibar. Let's go check that out._

But poor dumb Finch is a man, and men can be so soft and stupid when charmed by a pretty woman. He takes the glass she offers him with a smile. How long has it been since he'd had a drink with a woman? Since Grace, since Grace, always since Grace.

She walks away to fill a bag in her room and he takes a sip. It's quality stuff, not bad.

Fusco's getting down to business with Kyle. "Here's the victim's accounts. You recognize any of these charges?" From a year ago? Also, note that it's TruPrime bank, because if it's misery, it's TruPrime.

"Hardware stores," he says. "There were a lot of those on my accounts too. And bulk purchases of chemicals. That's what the cops used as evidence against me."

"Supplies for the labs."

"I guess." Poor Kyle. 

"Recognize anything else?" He doesn't. Fusco has another folder, and he wants to go over more accounts, but Kyle sees a picture of Girl Jordan. 

"Wait. Why do you have a picture of her?"

"That's Jordan Hester. She's the victim."

"No, no, no. That's uh, that's Mary. She was the receptionist at my accountant's office."

Fusco's eyes drift down. "Mary?" Oh, no. He can't bundle his stuff up fast enough. "Excuse me a minute."

At the lab, Guy Jordan tells the chemists to finish and get the hell out. "I'll be in touch when I find a new lab."

"Get one with skylights like the last one. It's better ventilation for when we heat the phosphorus."

"Yeah, sure, whatever you want. Let's move."

Wrong answer. The chemists look at each other. Who knows who this guy is, but he sure as hell is not their boss. Head chemist pulls out his pistol, cocks it, points it. "Phosphorus is used to make meth, Boss. And the last place didn't have any skylights."

Outside, John is watching this go south. He's quick to get moving. No one is dying on his watch if he can help it.

"Who the hell are you?" the chemist says, his gun up to Guy Jordan's face. 

"I think we may have gotten this backwards, Finch. My Hester's not the identity thief, which means yours _is_." 

Finch is on the couch, not looking well, and looking worse by the second listening to that. His phone beeps and it's a text from Fusco. _It's the woman._ But it's too late now. He let this get away from him, and now it's too late.

"I know," he says softly as she comes up behind him.

"Something wrong, Harold?"

He has to turn his whole body around to look at her. He's breathing harder, and he looks down at his glass. It's all too late.

At the lab, Guy Jordan is trying to talk his way out of getting shot in the head, but it's not going well. At least until John dashes in, looking worried.

"Boss, Boss, the cops are outside. Everybody grab what they can..." Nice pretend tactic. Will Guy Hester be smart enough to go along with it? 

It doesn't matter, because oops, the one guy didn't forget the handsome face who almost caved his own in. "That's the guy who knocked me out." And so John just does it again with one punch.

Then it's on to the real threat, the cook with the gun. He takes a little more work. John holds the gun hand, clocks the guy, and tosses him over a table. He rolls to a stop.

Unfortunately, Guy Jordan is scared as hell and has no idea what is going on or who this lunatic who just showed up is. He has his own gun and he points it, terrified, at Reese. John puts his hands up.

"We don't have time for this. I know you're the real Jordan Hester."

"Then you know I'm not going anywhere." Actually he didn't know that. Crap.

At Girl Jordan's or Mary's or whoever the hell's place, Finch is going downhill quickly.

"I don't think I feel very well. In fact, I'm certain of it." He tries to stand as she watches, amused and almost fond. His breath is uneven, his balance even more so. "I feel quite discombobu–" and he falls back, gasping on the couch.

"It'll pass, Harold," she says. He looks up at her, and she's spinning and sparkling to him, sounding like she's talking to him down a long hallway. "Don't worry. Pretty soon, you'll feel much better."

Nobody's doing great, because John is still at gunpoint.

"Tell me who you are."

"Who I am doesn't matter right now." He talks softly, and just as softly advances. "What matters is, I know who you are."

"Who am I then? Stay _back_. I will shoot you."

"How?" John asks. He snatches the gun out of the guy's hand like it's nothing and holds it up to him. "The safety's still on." He tucks the gun away at his waist. "No offense, but I'm surprised you fooled these guys as long as you did." Jordan blinks. "Is that really how you think a drug dealer dresses?" Ouch.

John walks around the lab. "I know you're the real Jordan Hester. I know your life was stolen. Here." He throws something at him. Tubing for restraints. "I even know who stole it. Do the other one," he says, pointing toward the guy he tossed over the table.

"Well, who stole it?"

"First things first. What exactly was your plan?" They tie up the men as John keeps talking. "You were accused of being a drug dealer, so then you decided to become one?" He picks up the cook he's met twice by the feet and drags him along the floor. 

"No one would believe me. And I was always a bit of an introvert, you know, a private person." 

"Yeah," he shrugs. "I know the type."

"I never thought I would be punished for it. My old boss, police... people hear you're a drug dealer, they stop listening to you. I mean, have you ever hit bottom?" John knows all about descending into oblivion. "I never realized how far down I could go. After a while, I figured, if people keep thinking I'm this _guy_ , why do I keep trying to convince them that I'm not?" 

Because you still aren't. No matter what, you still aren't. Kyle wasn't. John wasn't. 

"Someone stole your identity, so you decided to steal theirs."

"Well, yeah, but only long enough to destroy this lab." He points at the barrel. "That's nitric acid, not safrole. It'll melt all this into mush, destroy this equipment. And then I was going to use the rest of this supply," he says as they look over at the bags of color, "about half a million dollars worth, to lure that bastard out into the open."

"And then what? Kill him?"

Hester shakes his head. "I don't want to kill anybody. I just want my identity back."

"Okay." John nods. "It's a terrible plan. But I like it, so let's do it." He's amused by this insane idea, sounds like fun to try. "Oh, first thing you need to know, the bastard isn't a he. She's a she." Jordan couldn't be more confused.

He taps his com. "Finch, are you there?"

"I most certainly am..." he says. He's got his jacket off, probably far too warm for it now. And he's taken his glasses off to admire, held up in the air. He looks at the distorted images in the lenses, shrunk and twisted parts of the room bent by cut glass and light. Behind him, Girl Jordan is packing on her bed.

"You need to get out of there. He wasn't planning to kill her, so she must still be planning to kill him."

"Why, I never..." He's still amazed by the view of her bookcase through the lenses, so close and so far, so tiny.

"Harold?" She walks into his view through the glasses. "You all right?"

He sits up, head wobbly, as serious as he can be at this level of inebriation. "I believe you've drugged me." Without his glasses and without his wits, Harold seems so fragile.

"Ecstasy. I told you you'd feel better."

He's trying his best to stay in his analytical mind, but it's slipping away from him. "My dopamine and norepinephrine levels are... wooosh." He waves his hand, imagining the numbers as a line on a chart running off into the distance. "But if I understand this process, I can counter the eff–" 

Yeah, he can't. He's lost in it. He falls back again, into the couch and into the world as seen through his held up lenses. "Oh, wow. Well, hello there," he says to her, distorted in the glass.

She's getting annoyed at this point and takes his glasses from him. He's feeling too good to care. "Well, it was either this or shoot you." She leans in, puts his glasses back on his face. He smiles up at her. "I find chemistry... so much more efficient."

John hasn't figured it out yet, packing things up with real Jordan. "Finch, I've got this end under control. But we're planning a surprise for our mutual friend."

Finch is talking to the ceiling. " _Our Mutual Friend_ , Charles Dickens. Published... 1864, '65. Plot turns on a case of _concealed identity_!" He raises his voice for the last bit, yelling at his captor as that's all he can do at this point. "How ironic." He sits up and turns around to her. "Hey, do you have a copy?" He'd read it right here and now in the middle of his murder, because of course he would, sweet thing.

"What?" Jordan and John say simultaneously. 

"Finch, are you all right?"

He falls back to watch the ceiling again. "Never been all righter. But I might have been outfoxed." He was just foxed. If he'd been tailing a man, none of this would have ever happened. "Finch outfoxed!" he says right in front of her. Even Girl Jordan is weirded out by it.

"Finch, what's going on?"

"Wow... wow, wow." 

And she has found his phone in his vest pocket. There's no indication on it who he's talking to, just the label _Secure Connection_.

"What the hell are you doing? Finch?" John can't tell by now he's messed up? Girl Jordan drops his phone in the water of a vase and the call cuts out.

Now John's voice deepens. He knows Harold is caught and helpless. "Finch?"

Girl Jordan leans in and finds the com in his ear. 

"Hey, hey, hey, hey! That is my very good friend." Awww, sweet Finch. You should tell him that some time you are not stoned out of your gourd. Girl Jordan drops it into the drink beside the phone.

"Who was it? Who is he? _Where_ is he?" Girl Jordan is furious now.

Finch mimes zipping his lips shut. "Nowhere that matters," he says slowly. "And not in the lab." Oh, Harold, you stupid, stupid man. He knows he's an idiot too. "Oh, no...!"

She goes to the kitchen, starts pulling out household chemicals from under the sink. She's making some kind of concoction in a plastic container. There's a bunch of foil stuffed in there and she pours something from a dark bottle into it. 

Finch is up on his feet by now, smelling the white lilies above his dead phone, letting their soft petals rub against his face. While she finishes up and goes to make a call, he's dancing to music only he can hear by the couch.

"Joseph," she says to whoever is on the other end of the line. "It's me. You need to get to the lab. No, _now_!" She puts whatever she's made into the microwave. "We've got bigger problems than I thought. I'm taking care of things here. I'll meet you there." She punches some buttons and the microwave kicks on, sparking immediately on the foil.

Finch is dreamy on the couch, oblivious to it, to her, to the world. He tumbles over and looks up at her when she returns. "I like your face sideways."

She smiles at him. He really is cute and kind, but she considers herself a businesswoman, and he's a liability. "I'm sorry, Harold." And she's gone. In the microwave, the container is now holding a small fire, sparking and turning in circles on the turntable.

"Fast as you can, Fusco," John says over the phone. "851 12th Street, the Village. Finch is in trouble."

"All right, I'm on it." Fusco hits the siren on his unmarked car and the light flashes on his dashboard. He puts the pedal down. Lionel is trying so hard to help, to be good. It's all he wants now.

Oh, but we can't watch anything too exciting, because Carter's still stuck with Donnelly. "You've still got your security clearance from your time in the army, Detective, so I can show you this." He leads her down some industrial looking corridor. She looks deeply worried about where he's taking her, what they're going to see.

"The FBI doesn't run classified ops unless there's issues of... national security." And she finds what he'd been getting at. It's a dark big warehouse room, one corner of which is a workstation to find the Man in the Suit. There's a couple of long tables covered in papers and lights and laptops. People are working. Behind them are multiple boards covered in pictures, maps. It's a hunt and they're well underway.

"Used to be the CIA worked closely with us. Then they stopped. Extreme action became the norm. Kidnappings, renditions, assassinations. And worse, we think they did some of these things right here in the US." No kidding, Donnelly. "And to run these ops, they needed dangerous, often sociopathic men... like the one you've been chasing." He nods at a blurry and dark zoomed-in picture of Reese, jacket solid black, his collar unbuttoned wide as he walks in a hallway somewhere.

But Carter knows he's not sociopathic. He may have done this work, been ordered to do it by sociopathic people, but he himself isn't one. She's seen the pain and guilt he carries, and the goodness inside him, the decency he helps so many with. No sociopath is capable of all that.

"But at some point, we think this man left the agency." _Left_ is one way to put it. "Initially, the pattern was chaotic, but now, a trend has emerged. We think we know what he's doing here in New York." All right, smart guy, let's hear it. 

Her eyes narrow. "And what is that?"

"We think he's selling his services to the highest bidder." Well, that's not completely wrong. He is technically hired and employed, and Finch is always the highest bidder, although in this case, he is the only bidder as well. And Carter knows it. 

"We've seen it before," Donnelly says. "Mexican special forces taking over the drug trade in Juarez, ex-British SAS selling blood diamonds in Liberia... Men like that, they're done fighting. There's no place for them in society, which makes them very dangerous." Again, he's not completely wrong. John is done fighting, at least for his country, and he can't imagine a place for him in society anymore unless society is Finch and the numbers. And yes, he is incredibly dangerous, but not to anyone who doesn't deserve his danger.

"We believe he's been working with one of the organized crime syndicates, specifically a man named Elias." Carter can't believe that's what they've come up with. John saved her life from Elias. He sure as hell isn't working for him, even if he does get tangled up with him sometimes.

"You think he's working for _Elias_?"

"One of our contacts in the Russian mob told us he took out a team they sent to kill Elias." Yes, because John doesn't let people murder other people. That's the whole thing. Poor Carter, the look on her face as she looks between Donnelly and that shadowed picture of John he has tacked beside him.

"Now, the CIA is already trying to clean up this mess. We know that you've been contacted by this man, Agent Snow." Donnelly points to another board, another picture. "We believe that he's the man the agency uses to sweep these domestic ops under the rug."

"Tell me..." Carter says. "What's the bureau's interest in this? What's _your_ interest? You want to put one over on the CIA?"

"Yes," Donnelly says, deadly serious. "I want to expose the CIA for what it's become, but... mainly, I want to catch him." Yeah, so did Carter. How'd that turn out? "We can't have rogue government hit men operating on domestic soil." He just said they do it all the time and fully sanctioned, at least on their end! Even in his dumb story, the CIA's trying to rein John in.

"Obviously, you feel the same,", he says. _OBVIOUSLY._ "That's why you've been so vigilant in pursuing him."

"Oh, without much luck."

"So far. But you've been working alone." He steps closer, looks into her eyes. "Now, you'll have the bureau's support." Oh, great, thanks, just what she wanted. "We're going back to all the old cases, reinterviewing witnesses, looking at physical evidence. So beyond your report, is there anything else you can share with us?" 

She looks him over, this eager, over-confident, misguided man. "Nothing comes to mind." Nothing he deserves to know, anyway. She presses her lips together. "But, um, I'll keep you informed." 

He nods as she goes to leave. "Rest assured, Detective. We'll find him." He'll try, anyway. She leaves him there. She's just lied to the FBI about a man she doesn't really trust anymore. Not enough, anyway. They're all in so deep.

At Girl Jordan's, Finch has found the sparking microwave and is happily dancing in front of it to the music of its destruction and his own imagination. Fusco edges in, gun at the ready. He sees Finch from behind in the kitchen.

"You alone?"

"What?" Finch points at the flames in the microwave, amazed by something he's never seen before. Never seen before for good reason. He raises his voice to Fusco, who's still clearing the place. "Hello, Detective! Just in time for dinnnnnerrrrr. Have a seat, almost ready." His tie is loose, he's so far from the collected perfection he wears as a shield.

Fusco leans into the kitchen. _What the hell?_ He only knows Finch to be incredibly erudite and serious, and now he's jamming to music no one can hear and half singing at him.

"Faaasssstttt fooooooood..." He's mesmerized by the flames in the microwave, growing larger, engulfing the space. "Very bad..."

"What is that?" Fusco says when he finally sees what Finch is blathering about.

"She made it for me. It's some kind of flambé." Of course it is, sweetheart. Of course it is. 

Fusco leans in and turns the microwave off, although Finch tries to grab him to stop him, laying a hand on his back. "Wait wait wait! It's not ready!" He's so disappointed when the sparks stop. 

"Come on," Lionel says, turning him around, keeping an arm around him. He's so pliable like this. "Let's get you out of here. This way, this way."

As soon as he's out, he calls in to Reese. "I got him."

"Good. Thanks, Lionel." There's relief in John's voice, but while Finch might be safe now, their number certainly isn't yet. "I'll call you as soon as we're clear."

They're about to leave when they're ambushed by two tough armed guys. "Don't move! Drop the bags." 

Girl Jordan walks in, focused on the man she stole from and not on the man who is by far the most dangerous in the room. "Hello, Mr. Hester. Did you really think you could take over my operation?"

"Well, you're here, aren't you?"

"Touché. I'm thinking of keeping your name a little longer. After all, I'm a better Jordan Hester than you've ever been." She turns her head to her men. "Get rid of them. More than enough chemicals in here to deal with the bodies." And she's gone. John can only watch. For now.

The squirrelly kid stands over the plastic they've laid to kill John and Jordan on, and moves the gun nervously between them.

"Wait, wait, wait," John says as gentle guy Jordan flinches away, braced for his death. "I've got something important to show you."

"Yeah, yeah?" The gun moves back over to John. "What's that?"

"Hydrochloric acid." He holds up a dark brown bottle straight out in front of him. "You don't want me to drop this."

"You're lying," says the gunman.

"Yeah?" John flicks the cap off and douses the guy in the clear liquid of the bottle. The man grabs his face and screams in pain. His partner comes up to try to attack John, but obviously that's a bad idea, and a few hits later, he's down on the floor motionless. He didn't even get a punch in. 

John kneels by the man's body and takes his gun. He looks up at the squirrelly guy, who's still clawing at his face.

"Relax," he says. "It's just water." And he fires twice, taking out both the man's knees. Jordan is pretty horrified, listening to the only man still conscious groaning in agony on the ground. John smacks him on the back. "Time to finish this, don't you think?" They step over the man's writhing body and head out.

In Fusco's car, Finch is mesmerized by all the red buttons. He flicks them indiscriminately, laughing. One of them kicks the siren back on.

"Hey, knock it off." Lionel clicks the siren back off again.

"Where are we going?" Harold is enthused about everything right now.

"I'm going to take down some bad guys. You're going to stay in the car. Here." He hands over a paper. 

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Finch unfolds it. It's a printout of a website, the one for the CPA that Kyle had. We see the man's name, Richard Eckhart.

"I found what connects the two Jordan Hesters. A discount tax prep chain, same accountant. You're going to help me track him down."

Finch looks somewhat overwhelmed taking in all this and staring at the paper in his hands. He's going to be more so in a second.

"Here. Know how to work this?" Fusco drops a police computer in Finch's lap. 

He gasps when it turns on. He didn't even have to hack it. They just gave it to him, let him in. "Oh...." He looks over at Lionel, excited and mischievous. "You wanna hack the Pentagon?"

Hilariously, Fusco just tosses his head rather than tell him no.

Elsewhere, the Machine is watching Girl Jordan walk into a restaurant. He's having a martini in a red leather booth when a balding man walks up to her. "We had to meet here?" He's not happy.

"Relax, Richard. Dinners with clients are a write-off. You should know that."

"I can't keep doing this, Mary. I could lose my _job_." Maybe he should have thought of that before he financed and abetted identity theft and drug trafficking.

She leans in, menacing. "You give me what I want, or you're going to lose a lot more than your job." But she's enthused about this next part. "Now, who do I get to be next?"

"You said a woman this time, right?" He's got a folder with him.

"Well, men tend to hold a grudge." She's about to open the folder he passes over when a blue one falls from above on top of it.

"Try this one instead." It's Reese. She's stunned silent, and he takes a seat at the booth next to her. "Your name's not Mary either." Actual Jordan walks up too. This is what he dreamed of. John's pretty pleased with the situation too. "It's Tara." 

She closes her eyes and sinks a bit. She's caught. John looks over at the confused CPA man. "You can run along." John's only got eyes for Tara and the folder about her he's brought. "Nice mug shot. Impressive rap sheet too. Arrests for shoplifting, forging checks, insurance fraud. Torched your own name by the time you were 23." Who knows how many names Harold had by 23.

"What now?" She scoffs. "You gonna kill me?"

John looks up at real Jordan for his decision. "For a while I thought I might have it in me," he says. "But then, I was just playing you, wasn't I?" There's nothing she can say. John gets out of the booth. "For the record, you make a terrible Jordan Hester." Real Jordan leaves triumphant just as the police arrive to arrest her. Hey, it's our pal from identity fraud that Fusco met at the diner.

Jordan and John watch her get marched out cuffed from a railing above the restaurant. "Thank you," Jordan says, and he reaches out with an open hand. John takes it, shakes it. "For giving me my life back." That's what he does, baby.

"You're welcome," John says in that soft, gently sincere way he always does. They're all welcome. It's the least he can do now for all that came before.

Reese strolls up to Fusco, downstairs watching the arrest. "How did you track down her old mugshot?"

Fusco doesn't look over, just tosses his head. "Police work. Even I do it on occasion."

"I'm surprised you didn't want the collar."

"Too high-profile. Plus, I think HR's taking a cut of her operation."

"Which do you like better," John asks, "good cop or bad cop?" Do you even have to ask anymore, Reese?

Lionel looks up at him. "You tell me. Am I under with HR, or am I working cases with you?"

"I'll let you know." So, both still.

Carter's at her desk by a mountain of paperwork. In her hands are the photos, dark and blurry and low-res, of John, this strange, kind, reckless, and dangerous man she's gotten herself hopelessly tied up with. The flip phone rings again. _Number Withheld._ She almost answers, but clicks it off and stuffs it back in her pocket instead. It's still too much.

Fusco's back at the prison getting Kyle free. Good luck to him. He's been through hell and back. Lionel puts out his hand and Kyle takes it without hesitation. Fusco's the first cop who ever believed him, ever even tried to help him. He's the first sign to Kyle that there's still decency left in the world.

Lionel hands him back his old wallet and ID and his old lost life. "You're a free man. Now get home to your little girl."

In the library, Finch is holding that same version of _The Trial_ that he'd found in the bookshop with Girl Jordan. He had it in his collection the whole time. He's blown away by the shelves that head on into the dark distance of the room.

"Whoa, why didn't you tell me I had so many books?"

John is just behind him, watching him, staying in arm's reach. "It'll be out of your system in a few hours." He holds up a six pack of water bottles. "But you should really drink this, so you don't get dehydrated."

Reese hands it over and turns to go back.

"You leavin'?" Poor disheveled Harold doesn't want to be alone.

"No, I'll stick around, keep an eye on you." He's gentle and a little amused. He hands over a blanket. "You should really get some sleep."

"You don't want to talk?"

John blinks. "You might regret it in the morning. You're a very private person, remember?" He goes to walk away again.

Finch shifts back and forth. "Come onnnnnnn. Ask me _anything_."

Reese turns back, rubbing at his neck. He could. He knows it. Right now anything he wanted to know about Harold is right there for the taking. But it would be taking by force. No cat and mouse game of intelligence. No consent. It would be taking advantage of Finch in a wounded, vulnerable state, and this man has been nothing but generous with him, at least with everything but personal information. This would be an unclosable breach of trust, something he's only just found again in his life after so long, and he's only found it here with Finch. 

He drops his hand. There's no decision to be made. "Good night, Harold." He walks back into the stacks and disappears around the corner.

Harold turns, softly smiling. Quietly, he gives his own farewell. "Goodnight, Nathan." 

Oh, god, it's excruciating. Could John hear that? Poor sweet Finch, drifting in dreams of lost comfort and happiness. In his mind, he's still there, right there with his dearest friend, who loved him and cared for him for decades. In this moment of thin reality, the past blurs with the present, and Nathan can be there with him, just right there down the hall. It's agony. Or it will be, when Finch wakes up and realizes he's still and will always now be without him.

* * *

#### Prompt ideas

  * Finch wakes up in the middle of the night or the morning and realizes he's not with Nathan. He never was. Nathan is dead and gone. He's alone there in the library without the only person he ever really trusted.
    * Could extend that idea of trust to John. Where they have been together on that spectrum, where they are now, and where Harold feels they might go in the future.
  * Did John hear him? I can imagine him stopping around the corner, just catching it. "Goodnight, Nathan." And although John only knows shards of this story, he knows that Finch and Nathan had been friends since they were young, and that Nathan died a sudden, violent death only a few years back, in very possibly the same disaster that so badly wounded Finch. Harold has been alone all this time since. It hurts John's heart to think about.




	20. POI 1x19 - Flesh and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which five numbers come up all at once, Elias makes a move and a mistake in staring down Carter, and John and Harold have to go to great lengths to protect her innocent son.

### POI 1x19 - Flesh and Blood

#### Landmarks

  * Carter comes back into the fold
  * Carter holds tough against Elias and proves she's not alone anymore
  * Finch convinces HR to stop supporting Elias by talking directly to Simmons
  * John and Finch save Carter's son
  * Carter shoots one of the dons, her sixth on duty shooting
  * Elias goes to prison but that stops none of his plans
  * Elias kills his father and half brother
  * Most of the Five Families are now dead



#### Injuries

  * **John**
    * Shot in the chest with an uzi while wearing a vest and barely flinches



* * *

Elias is talking and the Machine is listening. "Sometimes I wonder what kind of man I'd be if she hadn't been killed. I hear people change when they lose a parent, especially when that parent is murdered." Childhood trauma gives so much of this open ended wonder. A person knows who they are now, how much pain they're in now, how hard they are now. Was it destined? What other path could there have been for them before they were able to choose your own path at all? 

Carter's dropping Taylor off at school. She needs to get her brakes checked, they're squealing.

"Oh, big test today, right?" She shakes her head. "Always hated algebra. All those Xs and Ys made my head spin."

"I don't mind it so much." He keeps his eyes low, never looking at his mother.

"Hey, you wanna talk about it?"

"It's no big deal."

"It seems like it might be."

"It's just some rich d-bags giving me a hard time for being on scholarship." Bully jerks. They'd be on scholarship too if they weren't so stupid.

Carter's mad. "I wanna know who they are."

"No way. Last thing I need is you fighting my battles. I'm not some little kid." He still is to her, of course. He looks over. "I'll take the subway home tonight. I know you're working late."

"Pad Thai for dinner?"

"Yeah." Aww.

"Have a good day, okay?" She watches him go. Being a kid is so hard. But she's got a call.

"It's LaBlanca in S.I.D.. You ready for me to make your day?"

"You're about to tell me I won a paid vacation to Hawaii?"

"Almost as good. You know those accounts you thought belonged to Elias, the ones we traced to that investment firm a few weeks ago?" Yeah, we all remember Adam and the bank, where we also remembered Virtanen before that. These cases string together. "When you flagged those accounts, they had a balance of $4 million. As of this morning, not a dime. Elias drained them, Carter. All of them."

She scoffs, as always scoffing at men and the lunatic things they do. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

John's strolling into the library and Finch has faces on the glass already. He's in just his vest, standing and looking at what's ahead of them today and adding tape to another picture to add to their backlog.

"Bit of a late start, Mr. Reese." Wonder how long this is after the ecstasy business? "Did you forget to set your alarm?"

"Had my yoga class." It would be worth money to see that.

Finch looks over slightly with an eyebrow raised. "Well, I hope you've gotten in touch with your _chi_ , because it seems we have a big day ahead of us. We received five numbers this morning."

John's relaxed about it. "Hmm. Bumper crop."

"Meet the heads of the five families. Caparelli, Zambrano, Grifoni, Basile, Gianni Moretti Jr."

"Moretti's son..." 

"Junior took over when Moretti went to prison. Unless all these men suddenly decided to turn on one another, I think it's fair to assume they're being targeted."

Now that John doesn't like. "Short list of people crazy enough to take on the entire leadership of the Cosa Nostra."

Finch looks grim. "Only one, in my opinion."

"Elias. He's already kidnapped his father."

"Eliminate the remaining dons, he could control the _entire mafia_."

"I don't know, Finch. We could let the trash take out the trash."

Yeah, that's not something Finch is inclined to allow to happen. He folds his arms, displeased. "I know they encouraged a certain moral flexibility," he says, shaking his hand back and forth like a wavering scale, "when you worked with the CIA, Mr. Reese. But I like to think that we're reaching for a _higher_ standard." 

Finch is not one for moral flexibility. John smiles. He likes his new more rigid standards he's held to, the guidelines that he can follow. Finch keeps him pointing true north.

"In any case, we need to consider the collateral damage." Collateral damage is what Finch knows more about than anyone, how one person's loss can echo and hurt so many others.

"So we're going to babysit the five most powerful criminals in New York. How do we get close to them?"

"These gentlemen meet once a month at the Covenant Club in Brooklyn." And conveniently, that once a month is today. John shows up and starts taking pictures. "There are no cameras allowed inside the private meeting room, and no cell phones."

"Not going to be easy to spy on these guys. Not even for you, Finch." You can hear John's amusement in his voice.

"That sounds like a challenge, Mr. Reese." Heh. He'll find a way.

We see Harold in his fake civilian gear and a green hard hat, carrying a toolbox down the street by the building. "The club recently installed a new fire alarm system. In case of emergency, fire fighters could communicate with anyone trapped inside through a _sound system_." He heads down some stairs and cracks open an electrical box full of wires and transistors. "But any speaker can be converted to a crude microphone by reversing polarity." He snaps a black box inside and et voila, there are our mafia dons in absurdly perfect clarity.

They're complaining about Homeland Security not even knowing how to take a bribe right as Finch finishes up in the box. 

Reese is impressed. Harold took it as a challenge and succeeded flawlessly. "Nice work, Finch."

Moretti, Jr. isn't having all this old style camaraderie and joking. "Are you kidding me with this? Business as usual like nothing's changed?" He wants total retaliation for his father's abduction and very likely murder by Elias. The old men, not so much.

"You mean your half brother? Your old man brought this on himself. He sired a little bastard and then he had the poor taste to have the mother bumped off."

"That's a filthy lie." Good luck with that one. He can't believe that they're talking about doing business with Elias. "You want to work with a man that you know is robbing you and stealing our territories?"

Zambrano, formerly Johnny Sack on the Sopranos, sits back. "It's a business, kid. It's not a love affair. We work with him, we all get rich."

Finch comes up to Reese outside in the sunshine. It's rare to see them together outside. And when one of them isn't bleeding or strapped to a bomb.

"We need to convey to these gentlemen that Elias won't be interested in making a deal. I think it's time to update Detective Carter." He lets the moment hang, waiting to see if John takes the bait and says how he's doing on the Carter front. Yeah, it's not good.

"That could be difficult, since she's not speaking to us." She's not speaking to you, John, and only by that extension Finch.

"An apology might go a long way, Mr. Reese." _I tried to get you a "Sorry I got your mob boss kidnapped and your friend shot" card but they were all out._ Finch eyes John. If it had been him, he would have already smoothed this over. Or at least more competently attempted to past just endless rejected phone calls.

John tries to just call yet again and make the apology, but how is that ever going to work when she always hangs up on him? She's at the station looking into the empty accounts. 

"If Elias moved all of his money, where did it go?"

Her friend in finance is there with her, looking a bit Dana Scully and Clarice Starling. "I don't know yet. The funds went out to over 1000 unique payees."

"Did you get any names of the people he paid?"

"It's not that easy."

"Yeah, it never is with this guy."

"Everything's going out as cash or wire transfers. We could trace it, but the warrants alone would take a couple weeks. What do you think he's buying?" If only she knew someone who could get this information in a couple minutes tops... 

Joss twists her earring, thinking. "Elias doesn't care about material things. He buys _people_. People who'll murder for money." Off to the side, Fusco is trying to listen in to this in his usual terrible stealth, leaning over a cabinet with papers in his hand he's not bothering to look at. "Cops and politicians who'll look the other way." And Fusco immediately looks the other way in her sight.

"Well, whatever it is, he just bought a _lot_ of it."

In some room where wine is aging in barrels, Elias is bringing his father a plate of food. 

"You'll have to eat with your hands. I remember you were pretty good with a knife back in the day. They called you _The Blade_ , right? I never understood your generation and... the ridiculous nicknames." Elias twists his hands together in front of him. He's been waiting for this moment for years, this epic confrontation. And it's just this grumpy asshole old man. "You spent too much time growing fat. Soft. Some of them even tried to turn the family legit, like your son. I mean, your real son." Oh, these insane family dynamics. 

"Why don't you just kill me already?"

Elias comes to sit next to his father, who is resolutely ignoring him. "I would hate for you to miss the show. I'm going to do what you never had the stones to do. I'm going to unite the families, and take control."

"Oh, that's some plan for a _nobody_." He turns to look at him. "And you think my associates are going to go along with this farce?"

"They won't have a choice." I still love the casting for Elias. Enrico Colantoni is so great in everything. He's an excellent character actor and he's great here too, soft spoken, gentle seeming, but serious and merciless. "Besides, I never learned how to share. My mother might have taught me, but she didn't get the chance, did she?" Elias sighs. This isn't as satisfying as he hoped, but the show he has planned hasn't even started yet.

Fusco's pulling up to meet Simmons. He needs his brakes checked too. 

"45 minutes to Queens? I got a real job, you know." Yeah, two of them at least.

"HR is your real job, Fusco." Depends on the definition of real. "I need some intel on that guy who's been stirring things up around town. Tall guy with a suit. Likes shooting people in the kneecaps."

"I thought he was yesterday's news." In that Fusco literally talked to him yesterday. 

"Not to the feds. They set up a new task force trying to locate him. We wanna know everything they do, see if we can get to him ourselves."

"Why, you looking to put him on the payroll?"

"You ask a lot of questions, Fusco."

"I got an inquisitive mind." Terrific that he actually fights back on this. Good for you, Lionel. And it works.

"We're doing a job for Elias." Elias wants John? He could just call him. 

"Since when does HR work for Elias?" 

Simmons is touchy about that kind of thing. "We don't work for anybody. We lend a hand when it's in our best interest. Right now that's Elias." Nobody is overly comfortable with this situation. "When you're done looking into that matter, I'd call in sick. You don't want to be working homicide the next couple of days."

Simmons walks away, as mysterious and ominous as ever. What's he going to do, bomb the place?

In the library, Finch is reaching up to the top shelf for a book. His range of motion is actually quite good. "Are you certain this is the best course of action?" He pulls down enough to look a bit at the cover. "Mafiosi don't take kindly to people who approach them unannounced." 

John's outside some mob front restaurant. Finch is still talking. "They're like feral dogs that way."

"No time for anything but the direct approach, Finch. Besides, I've always been good with dogs." Yes, he really is!

Some don jerk comes out of the restaurant with his toady. He doesn't like the look of Reese the instant he sees him and his muscle reaches for the piece in his leather jacket. 

"What are you, lost?"

John keeps his hands up. "I'm here to give you a heads up about Elias. He's got plans. And they don't include you and your friends."

"You a cop?"

"Not even close. Frankly, I'd be inclined to let you idiots kill each other, but that could get messy. Your men here can't protect you. But I can, if you come with me." Hard to believe John thinks this is actually going to work. In what universe ever would anyone agree to this random dude off the street? _Come with me if you want to live._ Sure, Terminator, I'll be right over. The mob boss is already halfway laughing.

"Thanks for your concern, my friend, but... I don't need your help." He walks away and gets in the car. John closes his eyes, his long lashes against his cheeks. The man has chosen death. He tried. Death always hurts him, even for someone this despicable, even for a death freely chosen.

John turns around to walk away. It's done. "I struck out, Finch. Caparelli wouldn't listen to me." Well, the offer was rather nonsensical, to be fair. 

He makes it maybe three more steps before the car explodes into an enormous ball of flame. John ducks, instinctively taking cover against the noise, the force, the heat. When he stands up again and looks back, car alarms are going off. Black smoke roils upward. And the car is nothing more than a husk.

Finch heard the awful noise, but he can only imagine it. He needs his eyes. "What happened, Mr. Reese?"

John looks down the street. Some random passerby who had been at a crosswalk is writhing on the ground in pain. Two women nearby run to help him. 

"Elias got to him, Finch. You were right about collateral damage." John's boss knows something important. No lives exist in a vacuum. Everyone is connected to others, even simply by proximity. There is nothing clean about death.

A car starts behind Reese and he turns to see Scarface pulling away. He's done his job for the day, or at least the first one. John is furious. They are guardians and these men only devils.

The Machine is reviewing old information and she slides through the decades this time all the way back to 1981. A little boy is talking in a nail salon.

"I wish they were dead. All of them."

"What happened, Carl?" This is Elias as a sullen boy. A woman kneels beside him, holds a bag of ice to his eye. He's been in a fight.

"They started it. Calling me names."

She rubs the back of his neck, leaves the ice with him and his already darkening shiner. "Mrs. Beecher told me you never turned in your term project."

"That's 'cause it was stupid."

She pulls something out of his bag. "Is this it?"

Ah. And now we know why it is stupid. It's a family tree. Carl listed his mother... and no one else.

"I'm not a bastard."

"Is that why you fought them? Who called you that?" Whoever his caregiver is, she really does care about him. "Come on, I'll help you fill out the rest."

"With what? It's for family."

"Well, Carl Elias, you got me. And your foster sisters."

"I had a mother. She's gone."

Poor foster mom, this is so hard for him and her. "Maybe we could do some research, find some more names to fill in."

Carl looks up. "Like my father?" Yeah, maybe not. She stiffens a little, sad for this poor lost soul. He's scarred for life. All she can do is help at the edges.

"Oh, h-honey..."

"You must have heard something about him, who he was."

"Carl. Do me a favor. Let it go." If only he'd trusted her and listened. He really did need to let this go.

"Do you think he even knows about what happened to my mom?" Uhhhh, yeah, I think he probably does, hon.

"Here's what I know, baby. We are all descended from kings. You gotta live your own life. Be your own man. You understand?"

He does not. He looks up at her, lost and confused. Why would she not want him to know this? Why does the world conspire to keep him separate from his own life?

It's now now, 2012, and adult monster Carl is with his dad, who is still tied to a chair and looks half asleep. Elias' phone rings. He answers it delicately with both hands. He's so incongruously gentle with his motions despite having so little gentleness in his soul.

"I was wondering when you'd call, John." He's not stupid. John is on the side of the angels, and Elias is busy cutting down the chaff. "I heard you witnessed the tragedy earlier this afternoon." He always knows how to twist the knife. "I hope you weren't hurt from the explosion."

John's at the library with Finch standing before him in his plaid vest. He takes a breath before addressing this psychopath. He leans forward. 

"Elias... End this before anyone else gets hurt."

"I'm only doing what I think is best for the city."

They've both risen now, agitated as they speak to one another. There is an uncomfortable respect between them.

"So you're gonna kill everyone who gets in the way?"

"We're more alike than you'd like to admit. Both killers in our own right. But now you save innocent people like Charlie Burton, not old gangsters. Just leave those men to me." He's honestly imploring John to stay out of his way. He likes John, respects his work, doesn't want to have to kill him if it comes to that. But he will, without hesitation, if that is what it takes. 

"You know I can't do that." John's voice is low, scratched. Finch listens behind him, looking forward.

"I can't say I'm surprised." Elias shakes his head. John made his choice freely. He didn't have to do this, but it's done. So be it. "See you on the other side."

John hangs up, chilled and furious. Finch's voice is soft and concerned beside him.

"We have another problem. Detective Carter."

"I thought she wasn't answering her calls." Neither of them look at each other. Finch just looks at the ground ahead of him.

"She wasn't. But, as you know... I've always taken... a somewhat liberal view of how to use a telephone." I love that Finch doesn't just mean he listens in, although he does that constantly. He also is referring here to his youth phone phreaking in the early days of modems, using telephones as weapons, tools for carving information out from where it was hidden. He was one of the earliest hackers, now aging, but still as connected to technology as ever, having watched it grow and helping it do so.

"She knows that Elias is up to something. After Caparelli's murder, she started reaching out to the remaining dons, offering them police protection."

John gets his gun out and pulls the clip. When he gets emotional, he gets out the tool he's used the most to end terrible feelings, to make awful things stop. 

"She doesn't know that Elias is planning to take them all out at once." He cocks his gun, tucks it behind him. Add one to the inappropriate gun cocking in the library tally. "Or that he's got HR's backing." He's already halfway to the door. "I need her location. Now."

Finch looks sad but leans quickly over his keyboard. This is something he can do, for good or ill. How Carter will take this invasion by them is impossible to know, but they have to try to protect her so she can continue to protect others.

It's night now, and Carter pulls up ahead of two police cars. She bends down by the window of the first. "You come with me. The rest of you lock down both ends of the block until we get this guy out of here, understood?"

A uniform comes with her as she walks toward the building. "Who are we bringing in, Detective?"

"Don Basile. He's going into protective custody until we can take down Elias."

They enter a shadowy alley and a white haired man is approaching from the opposite end. 

"You Carter? How am I supposed to know you're not on Elias' payroll?" Too late for that question, buddy.

"You can't. You got another option, I recommend you take it. Otherwise, let's move."

He gives in, and she and the uniform start moving him back toward the street and the police cars. But they're all gone when she gets there. There is nothing and no one, just the sound of her breathing and the empty blackness of night.

"Detective," the poor doomed uniform asks. "Where'd everyone go?"

Barely before she can say, "Get back!", a gunman shoots Basile three times and Uniform gets one in the arm or chest. Carter takes cover by a dumpster, but it's pathetic protection. As soon as the gunman rounds the corner, she'll be out in the open in his sights.

But two quick shots to the chest drop him on the sidewalk before he can get any closer. Carter can't do anything but breathe as John steps out and walks over to the man he murdered just seconds ago. He hasn't even turned around to look at her yet. 

When he does, he's so inappropriately smug. "You really should return your calls, Detective." Hey, John, is that other cop even alive?

The Machine slips back to 1991, an Italian restaurant. Eating a steak at one of the very few tables occupied in the place, seated directly in the center, is Carl's dad, Don Moretti. A young man walks in with a box of bootleg CDs, because the 90s. The kid puts the box on a chair and goes to leave, but Moretti stops him.

"Hold on a second, kid. I'd like a word please."

His son next to him chimes in, looking small in an ill-fitting suit. "Maybe I should stay, Pop."

"Go home, tell your mother I already ate."

"But Pop, I was just thinking–" His father kills that thought with one look. He gets out of his chair immediately and disappears. Finally it is just the young man and Moretti.

"You came to us through Lou, right?"

"That's right, sir."

"Thing is, I don't know much about you, kid, but you look familiar. Along with the name. Elias." He takes another bite of steak. "I think you know what I mean."

"My mother was Marlene Elias, sir."

"I thought so. Beautiful woman."

Poor guy swallows. "I've been told that, sir." He can't say for himself, he doesn't truly remember her.

Gianni grumbles. "I thought about when this day might come. What I would say to you." He puts down his silverware with a clatter. "What are you doing here, kid? What do you want from me?"

Carl shakes his head. "I just want a job, sir. A chance to learn from the best. To prove myself."

Moretti drinks some more wine. "You know where diamonds come from, kid? Starts out as carbon. Black as coal, buried _miles_ beneath the earth. Takes pressure, temperatures hotter than hell, billions of years, until a volcano blows it to the surface. _That_ is the only way to form a diamond."

Carl is distantly amused. "Never heard that before."

"I didn't know my father either. I survived."

"I didn't know that, sir."

"But..." Moretti gets up, moves toward Carl and Carl moves toward him. "You're here because you figured some things out." He puts his arm on the kid's shoulder. "So, now you and me, we have our own little secret." Carl likes the sound of sharing a secret. The corner of his lip curls. "They tell me you got a pair, kid. Tenacious, capable."

"I like to think so, sir."

"You keep your head up." He tilts Carl's chin up just a little. "There's a place for you here." 

"Thank you, sir."

Moretti sits back down to his steak and wine. Carl turns around before he leaves.

"So nice to finally meet you." Moretti doesn't seem happy with that sentiment, but he nods and Carl walks out.

Back in 2012, Carter and John are at the Court Square Diner. 

"The officer's stable," she says. I'm glad someone cares at all what happened to that guy. "Lucky for us, you got good timing." He always does. She takes a breath. "I guess you should know, the FBI has a new task force set up in your honor. They think you're working with Elias."

Reese is locked on her, light sparkling in his eyes despite the shadows on his face. "I'm often misunderstood."

And then Finch walks in himself, which is impressive. It takes a lot to bring him out personally, but this is important. He slides in next to John across from her in the booth. She doesn't look at him at first.

"I take it things didn't go as expected with Mr. Basile." Unlike John, Harold keeps his hands out on the table, one laid atop the other, calm and visible.

"I don't know who to trust anymore," she says.

Finch is quick. "You can trust us... Detective." John just leans forward, begging her with the intensity of his gaze. _Listen to him, listen to him, listen to him. We're telling you the truth._

Carter closes her eyes, exhales a heavy breath. She is left with this, these two vigilante lunatics on the other side of the law. But on her side is no one she has faith in, and she can't keep doing this alone if she wants to stay alive, let alone get any justice done.

"Elias transferred $4 million in the past 48 hours to a dozen cash and carry hubs around the city." Finch watches her, listening with all of himself, his heart and his intellect. "We could use those transfers to track down the men working for him, but..." She shakes her head. "I can't access their database without a warrant."

Finch leans his head forward, thinking as he speaks, thinking mostly of how to address this without scaring her away. "Maybe I can use... other techniques... to access the information we need."

Yeah, Carter was expecting he'd say something like that and yet she still can't believe this is the position she's in. This is the choice she has to make if she wants to save lives and not just clean up bodies after they're dead.

John chimes in, and Finch looks at him out of the corner of his eye. "We track down the men on Elias' payroll, they may lead us right to him."

She sighs, this bit is done, fine. The ship has sailed, may it find them the harbor they seek. "In the meantime, I need to convince those old dons that the only way to stay alive is to work with us." Carter looks down, this is miserable for her. "Thanks for the backup," and she starts to get up to leave.

John leans and reaches for her across the table, brushing his hand across her wrist. He doesn't grab her, doesn't want to do anything threatening or provocative, but he needs her to wait for one more thing and he likes to impart his care through touch.

"Um, if I'm not there next time..." He pulls out a big black duffel bag next to him and lays it on the table. He doesn't look at it, only ever at her. "I want you to be prepared."

Carter knows this has to be insane, everything with them is. She unzips the bag. Just a few inches open and she can see it's huge armaments, grenades, high grade weaponry. She seals it back up. 

"Not exactly standard issue." She tilts her head at John. "Should I ask where you got these?"

"Probably best if you don't."

She's none too pleased, but she doesn't leave the bag behind. She'll accept their help. Her choices are few and the risk is high. But that doesn't mean she has to like it. She leaves them, and Finch turns to watch her go.

Finch showing up was key here – if only John had tried to talk to her, she may not have listened. Finch breaks the law but he's not violent. Like his hands on the table, he's above board with everything he does, legal or not. 

The next morning, she's got the bag in the back of a van or something as Fusco pulls up behind her. She pulls out some ridiculously enormous gun and puts a shell in it before she cocks it. Fusco's eyebrows are on the ceiling as he sees what she's up to. 

"You getting shipped back to Iraq or something?" It's more like she's bringing Iraq to her. She's got her vest on already. She's going to war.

"I need an assist. Did you bring that extra vest and ammo like I told you?"

"Yeah..." he reaches out for her bag of toys.

"Just get in. You're the only cop I can trust right now." Fusco is the only cop she can trust. _Fusco._ How things change.

Elsewhere, John's stalking a man in a leather jacket holding a cellphone with his high powered lens.

"Who am I looking at, Finch?"

"I was able to trace the financial transactions coming out of Elias' accounts." He's doing so as he speaks, sitting in front of his layers of monitors and layers of windows on each. Thousands upon thousands of letters and numbers across half a dozen screens, and Harold processes it all. 

"The man you're following is one of the recipients. Elias' payroll reads like a _Who's Who_ of the US penal system."

Uh, oh. John's noticed he's not the only one taking pictures. His guy is taking cell shots... of a woman and two small children walking down stairs from a park. 

"I'm following him... but who's he following? It's a family. Any idea who they are?"

"Maybe they're related to the dons? Elias isn't above threatening their loved ones."

But a cop walks up to the woman and lifts one of the children into his arms. It's Simmons. 

"Right theory, wrong organization. Elias' people are following HR families, Finch."

"I don't understand his strategy. HR are his allies."

"In war, you need to be able to coerce your allies every bit as much as your enemies."

"Which means if any of his law enforcement contacts gets out of line, he has a backup plan."

"That's what I would do." Do you do it now, John? Do you have a backup plan in case Finch gets out of line? What would out of line mean for him? Is there a line he can even cross? He doesn't have any loved ones you can hurt anyway. (That you know of yet and besides yourself, of course.)

The surviving dons are meeting again. Moretti Jr. is livid. "If you had listened to me to begin with, we could have gotten him before he went after my father."

Maybe Zambrano at the head of the table with a cigar would have something to say, but in walk Carter and Fusco.

"Detectives..." Zambrano says. "What's so important you bully your way into our club?"

Fusco's just here for the ride. Carter's in charge here. "You're going into protective custody until we can find Elias."

Zambrano laughs. "I don't think so."

"It's not really up for discussion. You've failed to control this man. Some of you tried to cut deals with him. And now he's coming after you. I'm not going to stand by and let innocent civilians get killed because you _chose_ to ignore what was right in front of your nose."

Zambrano yells for some goon Jimmy to show the detectives out. There's no reply. Junior gets up to check it out but it's not looking good.

"Looks like your boys abandoned you. You wanna bet Elias' men aren't far behind?"

Junior's still pissed. "We don't work with cops."

"You don't want to come voluntarily..." Carter is all determination. She pulls out her weapon and aims. "...We're gonna take you by force."

"What, are you gonna shoot us?"

"If I shoot you, then maybe Elias won't have to blow up a carload of innocent people."

Fusco eyes his partner, sees she's serious. He is her backup, he'll follow her lead. Out comes his gun too, although he is nervous about it.

"Hey, shouldn't we call for backup?"

"You are my backup." _Oh, great, that's great,_ he thinks.

They shuffle the men outside. Carter gets a call, but she silences it rather than answer. They get into the car just in time for Elias' men to come from the building. Fusco's driving, so Carter's free to use the big gun she was preparing earlier, a shotgun by the looks of it. She fires off two shots and the men dive away, giving them enough time to drive off, tires smoking and squealing.

Junior's phone rings in the back seat. When he answers, he looks confused, but everything is confusing right now in this chaos, so he just goes with it. He hands it forward. "It's for you."

"Hello?"

Finch is intense, standing in the library, leaned over his desk, watching the GPS map on his screen. There's no time for preamble. "Turn left and go two blocks to 954 President Street."

"You got good timing." Well, he would have had even better timing if she'd picked up the phone earlier. That must have been stressful in the library when she wouldn't answer him. He had to find another way. Finding another way is his whole life.

"Go to the second floor. The code is 3288."

When they get there, it's a weird place instantly. It's all brick with a huge medieval suit of armor in the corner and what looks like a sword rack on the floor next to it. 

Fusco shuts the door behind them. "Who owns this place again?"

She purses her lips. "A friend."

"You got some weird friends, Carter." You do too, Lionel.

Elias is still hanging out with his dad if kidnapping can be called that. He's playing solitaire to pass the time.

"I don't remember a lot about my mom. I was four when she died. Of course, you know that." Moretti is a captive audience in every sense. "But every so often I get these images of her, especially when I smell her perfume." Smell is the closest sense to memory. Elias takes a breath, imagining inhaling it again, taking inside himself that small piece of her. "Shalimar, I think." 

He smiles over at his dad, who just stares at him with total hatred. This bitter old man is reduced to being strapped to a chair forced to listen to some bitch's kid blather on about his whiny troubles. 

"She had dark hair. Kind eyes." You could have been kind too, Carl. You didn't have to choose this. You dishonor her kindness with every act of cruelty you commit. "Other times I just see the blood." He half shudders, trapped forever with this memory burned into him so early that it made the mold for the rest of his being. "S-so much blood from such a small person." 

Scarface comes up from behind and kneels beside Elias to talk quietly. "There was a problem, boss. That detective, the one you wanted gone... She took 'em."

"Which one?"

"All of them."

"I see." Elias is calm even with the worst bad news. He's already had the worst news possible in his life. Everything else now is just issues to be solved. "We'll need our friends on the police force to join us on this one." Scarface nods and rises, ready to do his boss' bidding.

Reese is still following Elias' men around. Finch pipes in. "Detectives Carter and Fusco are both safe and sound at one of my properties, Mr. Reese." As John clones this thug's phone, Finch is walking with his hands on his back, pushing his jacket aside to keep his hands atop his hips, and talking to the air. "As are the remaining dons."

"Good to hear, Finch. How did she convince them to go with her?"

"She didn't. She kidnapped them. It seems you've had something of an influence on her, Mr. Reese."

"Thanks, Finch."

Harold puts his hands in his pockets. "I'm not certain I meant that as a compliment."

"Elias isn't going to take this lying down, Finch. No sign of him yet, but I've tracked down a dozen of his men. All positioned to strike against the families of HR cops if things don't go his way."

"Luckily HR doesn't know where the dons are. Only Carter and Fusco do."

John thinks of something. "Finch... the men that we're tracking... are any of them near Marbury High School in Brooklyn?" 

Finch limps over to the computer quickly. In seconds, he has a red dot on the map by the school. "Yes, why?"

John's heart sinks. "That's where Carter's son goes to school." He takes off.

In the library, the realization hits Finch hard, but he wastes only a second to the terror of it. All of them are adults, they've made choices to live dangerous lives. But Carter's son is just a boy, an innocent. A child. After that one lost moment, that single skipped heartbeat, he's fallen in his chair, his fingers clattering across the keys. 

At the school, Taylor is being led out by some man. "What was the accident?" he asks. "Is my mom gonna be all right?"

"It's too soon to tell," says the man with the gravel voice and the police badge. "But I'll take you right to the hospital." Sure enough, it's Scarface, because if Elias really wants to make something happen, he sends his right hand to get it done.

They're walking away when Taylor's phone rings. Incoming Call Unknown. He answers, and his hello gets Scarface's attention a step ahead of him.

"Taylor?" Finch's voice does not hide fear well, but it also does not hide his sincerity. "You don't know me, but you are in danger." We see him in the library, one hand out, talking to the space in front of him as if it were the boy himself. Much of Finch's life happens in his imagination. "And I want you to stay inside the school with a teacher until we can get to you."

But Taylor's already outside. He's been lured out by this policeman... if he is a policeman. Taylor slows to a stop on the pavement. Scarface turns around to him. 

"Taylor?" Finch is desperate for any kind of response. Except the one he gets.

Scarface knows the jig is up, and he pulls Taylor's phone hand down and away from his ear. "Just keep quiet, and you won't get hurt."

Finch couldn't get it done with words, so it's time for something a little more direct. John flies up to the curb and squeals his brakes stopping. He's not the only one worried about Taylor here. A school security guard has emerged from the school and walks toward them. "Hey, I need to see your pass!"

Scarface tucks Taylor away in the backseat and gives the guard his pass, about 87 bullets from an uzi. 

John hears the shots, starts walking toward them, all ice fury. Within seconds he's firing too. He drops Scarface's guy at the front of the car instantly. Scarface shoots at John and actually hits him at least once in the chest, but John's wearing a vest so he just jerks a little from the force and continues to advance, relentless. Scarface takes the chance to flee, jumping in. The driver takes off, tires squealing. John wants to shoot at the car, take the driver out, but he can't. Taylor's there in the backseat, in the window, looking terrified. 

John looks scared too, breathing hard. This is the worst case scenario.

At Finch's Bruce Wayne weirdness safehouse, everyone is tense and restless.

"How long you think we can stay here?" Fusco asks, peering out the window.

Carter rocks a little on her perch at the end of the table. "Until we know they're safe."

Fusco breathes a humorless laugh. "They're mob bosses, Carter. That ain't gonna happen any time soon."

They hear a car pull up. Shit. "How did Elias' men find us? I thought you shook them off."

"I did, we were free and clear." Fusco walks away to check their defenses as Carter's phone rings.

"What do you have?"

John's walking, talking, dying inside. "Carter, I need to tell you something. You've gotta know I'm not gonna let anything happen to him." Something already happened to him. "You understand? I'll find him."

"Find who? What's going on, John?" Her phone beeps. Another call. It's Taylor. And all at once, she knows. Her voice shakes when she answers. "Taylor? Taylor?"

The phone sits in Taylor's tied hands, but Elias plucks it away.

"You've got a great kid here, Detective." As always, Elias twists the knife with his faux gentleness.

She walks a few feet away. Her voice is low, a little teary, but hard as nails. "I swear to god, if you touch him, I'll kill you."

"You have the means to set him free." Elias walks around his weird basement wine barrel kidnapping hellhole to talk. "You can't call for backup. Who are you gonna trust anymore?"

"You know I can't hand these guys over to you. I might as well kill them myself."

"If you're up to it, that would be extremely helpful." God, I love Elias and Enrico Colantoni. His delivery is gold. He's all honesty, talking with his hand as if she was right there.

"Why do you need the bosses dead, Elias? You've already shown how powerful you are."

He's getting a little frustrated, and puts his hand down into his pocket to walk more as he talks. "You don't understand the evil you're protecting, do you? Let me tell you something about Zambrano. He earns his living by selling heroin to schoolchildren. Grifoni sells guns to the highest bidder. My esteemed half-brother, a man who not only imports drugs but young girls. These are the men that you are protecting." She looks at each of them in turn. But his words are meaningless.

"Things would be much better under your watch, huh?"

"I run an efficient enterprise. There's no infighting, there's no conflict over territory..." Even the way Elias holds the phone is incongruous delicacy, his pinkie up and off of it. "I am the evolution of organized crime." No, modern finance is the evolution of organized crime, Elias. You're just a gussied up version of the old kind.

Carter is steel. "You're a force of corruption and weakness. My answer is no." Elias doesn't even seem particularly angry. He always respects people who stick to their beliefs and code of ethics. Honor deserves honor in his book.

She drops that call and her breathing shakes. She brings the phone back up to her ear. Across the room, Fusco can tell something is very wrong. 

"He wants to trade Taylor for the dons," she says to John. "How can I do that?"

John has slipped out of his now destroyed vest and is putting on his coat again. His shirt is even more unbuttoned than usual. "You can't. But you don't have to make that decision, 'cause I'm gonna get your son back. No matter what the cost." John would trade his life away without any hesitation if it would protect Carter's son. Or Carter. Or Finch. Maybe Fusco. Depends on the situation.

"I won't let anyone hurt him," he says. Reese is usually unbreakable iron, but his voice shakes a little here as he gets his guns ready in his trunk. He loves good people, holds them close to his heart as his own, and he always protects women and children. This is family, it is killing him, and he will stop it, come whatever may. "You hear me, Carter?"

"Promise me," she says, a breathy whisper.

"You have my word." John would go to the ends of the earth if that's what it takes. He will not break his word.

He shuts the trunk. It's time to go. "Finch, I need you to tell me where to find the boy."

"I'm a step ahead of you, Mr. Reese." Finch is outside in the sunlight, limping down the sidewalk. He protects their own, the decent and the innocent, even at his own risk and even as fragile as he is, because their lives are what he's dedicated his own to. "The only way to locate Taylor is to make a deal with the devil."

"I hope you're not referring to Elias," John says as he starts the car. 

"Elias isn't the only fallen angel in our rolodex, Mr. Reese." Rolodex. Harold's showing his age here.

Elias' men are multiplying outside the safehouse like bacteria. Fusco comes over quietly to Carter at the window. He's worried about her.

"You okay, Carter?"

She can only bear to look at him in her peripheral vision. "They got my kid."

Fusco sinks a bit. He's a father. This is the worst thing he can imagine. "You sure not calling backup's the way to go here?"

"You don't get it, Fusco." She nods down at the men outside. "You see those two in the suits? They work vice at the 15th. They're here to help Elias, not back us up."

Now he finally understands. "What do you wanna do?"

Finally she meets his eyes. "Wait." She takes a shaky breath, looks around the room. "Make sure this place is sealed off. 

"Yeah, okay, I'll do a sweep. Make sure it's airtight."

Head mob asshole is playing pool on Finch's table. "You should have been our wheel-man, Detective Carter. I don't think your partner had it in him."

"Don't go blaming Fusco, this isn't on him."

"You sure about that?"

"Because I got this vague recollection... that your partner used to be on the take." He takes another shot. "In fact, now that I think of it, I'm sure of it." Junior is looking pleased as punch for a man facing death. "He was partners with that, uh, Detective Stills, right? That dirty cop who went missing a few months back? Those guys had their paws all over every game in town. All of them on the take. And they didn't care 'cause they'd just throw a piece upstairs, you know. Shaking down low-life drug dealers, pimps, whatever scratch they could get." Another shot. "They even did some wet work."

It's getting to Carter. She looks over at Fusco, who's bellying up to the kitchen bar to take out his phone. But there's no time for infighting, because a voice comes into the room for all of them to hear.

"Hello, Detective." It's Elias on the intercom. "I've come to talk it over in person." Outside we see him leaning into the microphone, talking with that terrible softness of his. "Are you ready to pick the right side?"

Elsewhere, at yet another diner, Finch is walking up to make his own deal. This is an unbelievable risk for him to take, but there is a life at stake, and so he will stake his. In his hands is a small manila envelope. He limps to a booth and stands above it.

"Hello, Officer Simmons." Simmons is having coffee and a burger with fries. He's about to have a lot more than that. "I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time."

"Who the hell are you?" 

Finch almost looks pleased here, because this reprehensible man is so much weaker than he is in this moment, and he is about to show him how weak and helpless he really is. He sits down and keeps his hands on the table, always as open with his intentions as he can be.

"You gonna tell me who you are or do I have to arrest you?"

Finch smiles a little. "I'd like to talk to you about your organization. The one commonly referred to as HR? It's come to my attention that HR has been paid a large sum of money to ignore any criminal activities involving a man named Elias." Harold is smooth here, calm. He's literally holding all of the cards, just underneath his steady hands on the table.

"Really?" Simmons is stiff as a board across the table. He leans in, threatening. "And how exactly did this come to your attention?"

Finch shrugs. "I notice things, Officer. Things the rest of the world ignores. And I've noticed things about Elias that I believe you've overlooked." This is his greatest power - knowledge and understanding, especially that which no one else possesses. 

"I doubt that. I'm a pretty observant guy myself."

Finch flashes a tiny smile again, amused this insect thinks his intellect is even comparable to his own. It's so pathetic it's actually amusing. "You think Elias stands for a return to the way things used to be. A firm hand on the reins of organized crime. But he also stands for other things." Time to show his hand. He slides the envelope across to Simmons and waits for the bomb to go off.

The pictures inside are of men taking pictures of families. These are Reese's shots, proof that no one is safe around Elias, not even innocent women and children.

"This is Elias' surveillance of HR police officers and their families." Simmons flips through. Each is more creepy than the last, these lurking men in dark coats lingering around the defenseless. "You're in bed with the devil. This man will go to any length to get what he wants including kidnapping children. Detective Carter's son is only his most recent victim." Finch's eyes narrow behind the reflections in his glasses.

"I didn't hear anything about that."

"Look, I recognize, Officer, that I'm placing myself in danger by sitting here with you." He's scared and he does it anyway, as always and ever. "I need you to understand that you're placing your family in danger by doing business with Elias."

And Simmons flips to the last photo, of Simmons himself holding his daughter in his arms, his wife standing beside him. And across the street is a skeevy looking man holding up a cellphone, getting a picture of his own. 

Simmons is down to a whisper. "What the hell is this?"

And Finch knows, because he always comes armed. Never with weapons, always with weaponized knowledge. "The man following your wife is an ex-con whose prior convictions include rape, manslaughter..." He hands over a rap sheet with a mugshot and fingerprints. "Elias is keeping you and yours in check... until his plan is finished. After that..." He presses his lips together. "Who knows whether he'll have any use for you."

Simmons looks around nervously. Finch has gotten to him. "How do I know this guy doesn't work for you, huh?"

'I imagine you don't." He raises his eyebrows. "But are you really willing to bet your family's life on it?"

"What do you want?" He's got him.

"You need to get me the location of Detective Carter's son, and call off any men you have working on Elias' behalf. HR _severs_ its ties with Elias as of this moment."

Simmons watches Finch, reading him, looks down at the pictures again. He's going to have to make a choice.

It's nighttime now and Elias has given up on talking his way out of this. Giant acetylene torch to the metal door it is, then.

"Not gonna wait all night, Detective."

"Let him go, Elias. He's got no part in this."

Elias shakes his head at the intercom. "Taylor seems like a very nice young man. I'd rather not hurt him. You need to accept the fact that no one's coming to save you – you are all alone." John's lesson, learned the hardest way. You don't have to be all alone. Speaking of John, Elias should be more worried about him. He's a potent wild card, and he's still in play and they all know it.

Carter is starting to believe it may be true that she's all alone, but she still won't bend. She says nothing, so outside, Elias tips his head at the door. _Get to work, boys._ He stands aside as they get to cutting, and he rubs at a straight scar across his palm, a memory, a lesson written in pain.

And the Machine knows the story, back in 1991. A car drives up in the middle of nowhere woods.

"I think, uh, I think it's right up over here," says one of the men climbing out. It's dark as hell, lit only by the headlights and a pathetic tiny flashlight. "Colder than a witch's nip in a brass bra."

We see young man Elias, being led by two older, bigger guys. "Where's Don Moretti?" he asks.

"Yeah, you tell me, kid."

The other one right next to Carl tries to elaborate. "Well, uh, the boss wanted me to tell you he wished he could be here..." he shoves Carl forward into the woods. "But he couldn't make it. Come on."

"Talk about brass," says the other one as Carl realizes what has happened. His father hasn't accepted him. No, his father has sent some goons to throw him away, just like his mother. "Used to be the dons would clean up their own mess. Moretti didn't have the stones to be here."

The closer one chimes in again. "You know, Deluca told me he made him get rid of the broad back in the day." He gestures toward Carl. "Now we gotta deal with this miserable bastard." Carl does not take kindly to being called a bastard. He tears up a little.

"Oh for crying out loud. Here come the waterworks."

"What's the matter, kid? Not the family reunion you were hoping for?"

Finally, Carl speaks again. "I'm an idiot, I should have known."

"Yeah, well, the don's already got one idiot kid. Guess he didn't need another one."

And instead of sniffling, Carl is laughing now. 

"You two think you're safe because there's just one of me." He looks at both of them, wants them to look at him. "That I'm weak and that you're strong. That's not strength. That's weakness. Look at you... a bunch of jealous idiots. Liars, betraying each other. I don't need that. I get my strength from being alone." _In the end..._ Also, credit to the guy playing young Elias. He's doing a marvelous job matching his emphasis and cadence to the full grown version. "And that's why I'm gonna destroy all of you."

"Shut him up already, will ya?"

The guy close by brings up the garotte wire and tries to strangle him, but Carl gets his palms in under it to fight back. The wire cuts into his flesh, but he's not giving up for anything. "Come on, help me out! Shoot this little bastard!" 

The farther guy gets out his gun. But he hits his partner instead and Carl comes up shooting himself instantly when he goes down, emptying the clip into the man's chest. And Carl is alone again, strong. His hands are cut to shreds, his life is torn to pieces, but he's alive. And now he has a reason to keep moving forward. If he cannot have love in his life, he will take the hate he has instead and use it.

In present 2012, Finch and Reese are pulling up to some warehouse nowhere. Finch looks terrified but determined in the driver's seat. 

"This is where they're holding Taylor," he says. Finch's eyes flick over the man beside him. "What's your plan, John?"

John is almost entirely in shadow. His plan is the same one he always has, to use his darkness to keep light from being stolen from the world, whatever that requires. He cocks his gun.

"No plan. I'll just take the direct approach."

"I'm sorry I'm not much use on this end of things." Finch is distraught that he is dead weight here in a situation of action, not knowledge. He's gotten them this far, but he knows he's useless any further. He hates that this is all the help he can offer his friends and this poor innocent boy. He hates himself for it. 

Despite every instinct he has, every nerve in his body telling him to stop, he picks up one of John's guns. "Look... Show me how to fire one of these and I can help." He stares at it, this tool of death in his hand. He'll never be able to do much with it, he knows, but he can do something. Anything. "I'll... create a distraction, I suppose, or..."

John gently puts his hand over Finch's on the gun and pulls it down. "That's okay, Harold." John would never want Finch to break his ethics this way and endanger himself for nothing. He would only be a danger to himself and by extension, John and Taylor. But John appreciates the sentiment greatly, loves Harold for his dedication and bravery in always going forward even when he's scared to death. He talks gently to him. "You can be the getaway driver."

Finch can't say anything. He knows how worthless he is for this. But if a driver is what John needs, then he can do at least that. It's almost nothing, but it's not nothing. It's what he can do.

"I'll be fine," John says to soothe him. Harold flinches a little at that. John is almost never fine. He just always says he is. "Besides, you know I don't like it when people mess with kids." Yes, but that's the whole point, John! Neither does Harold, that's why he's so desperate to help. 

John steps out as his softer face for Finch melts away. This is only the machine that Reese is, infinitely far away from the one Finch built. This machine is death incarnate, blood and bone. There is a job to do, a life to be saved, and there are a set of breathing roadblocks in his way to that life. They will not stop him. Nothing ever does.

Finch is left in the car, leaning over to watch Reese go. Now comes the hardest part for him. Waiting, watching, listening. And hoping.

At the safehouse, the door cutting continues. Elias waves for them to stop for a moment. He hops back on the intercom. 

"Last chance, Detective." She's listening inside. There's no way she cannot. "Those immoral corrupt men or your innocent son."

She looks over at Fusco and down at the bag of destruction John left for her. She's made her decision. This woman does not bend. Joss storms back over to her side of the intercom. "No deal."

"What are you gonna do?" Fusco asks.

"I'm staying right here." She is all defiance. Carter knows she has the help her friends left her if nothing else. Someone has to draw the line and hold the damn thing. If no one else will, then she'll do it herself while she puts her faith in her friends to hold up their end. She pulls out some enormous weapon. "They're not getting past me."

She cocks the monstrosity and aims at the door before she raises her voice. Joss doesn't need the intercom anymore. "I'm not as alone as you think!"

_Well, fine then._ Elias just waves and his men return to cutting. 

At the kidnapping building, John knocks on the heavy door. A man with a machine gun comes up to it and opens the eye hole slot just in time to have his knees shot to shreds through the door with an automatic. That's one down.

Scarface has Taylor in the back by the arm. He gestures at another man. _Be ready._

John blows the lock open and storms in, first aiming down to make sure the doorman is out of the picture, which he very much is. This is that weird wine barrel storage place. John sneaks around through it, SMG at the ready. He and one of the men exchange some fire and try to see through the diamond shaped empty spaces between the round barrels. One guy ends up behind Reese and gets a shot off before he gets wiped out himself. Not sure if John bothered with the knees on that one.

Nearby, Moretti is handcuffed to a chair listening to this gun battle. He stays as low as he can get. 

John moves to the back room and gets tackled into the wall by another goon. Directly in front of Taylor he fights this man hand to hand, elbowing him in the face, then taking a few knocks himself. They kick each other, John in the back, the man in the gut. At last the man doubles over, and that's when John has him. He knees him over and over in the stomach and face, dragging him away from the boy. When the man drops limp, he throws him off to the side and rushes back to Taylor.

But there's still at least one other guy, not including Scarface who hasn't been seen since John opened the door. John grabs the SMG off the floor again and fires at the man rolling away. The guy didn't roll far enough. John tags him in the head or the chest. He comes out to see about Scarface, but he hears the door click – he's retreating. Which means John can get what he came for. _Who_ he came for.

He walks up to Taylor trying not to seem too threatening, but the boy just watched John waste three or four men, kick the living hell out of another right in front of him, and just in general be a walking one man army. 

"Are you okay?" John asks. He might be after some therapy.

"Yeah." Taylor's hands are tied. John leads him forward. "Who are you?"

"My name's John. Your mother sent me." Of course John would not take credit for this. He is only a weapon others point. 

As they go, John sees Moretti in a corner. "You here to rescue me?" the old man asks. "Or shoot me?"

"Tonight... rescue." He's not going to kill him in front of the kid. Besides, Carter wants him alive and John wants her to stop being mad at him.

At the safehouse, Fusco peeks through the blinds at the men outside. They're driving away.

"Hey, Carter," Fusco's speaking softly since Elias is just outside. "Those HR cops just took off."

She cocks her gun. "Keep the dons in the back."

Fusco draws his own tiny weapon and yells at the men. "Hey, you heard the lady. Get back!" But Zambrano sees his chance and he takes Lionel's other gun from his waist back and aims it at Carter.

"Open the door, Detective." Hey, man, you know Elias is going to kill you, right? She swings around to aim back at him.

Junior can't believe this either. "I should have known." Both Don Moretti's sons should have known. "All that nonsense about bringing Elias into the fold. You're an embarrassment! A rat!"

"Elias offered me a deal. When change comes you gotta adapt. You and your old man, you never learned that lesson."

"Drop it, Zambrano."

He shakes his head. "Not until you let me out of here. You should have given Elias everything he wanted like the rest of them."

She shakes her head. "I don't look the other way." No, she doesn't. Neither do John and Finch. That's why they love her. And why she's beginning to love them.

"Yeah, but your partner does. Right... Fusco?" Lionel can't help a little drop in his composure. That he was so weak is a wound that doesn't heal, and John won't even let him try.

"You see, in less than 30 seconds there's a guy that's gonna come into this room that's gonna run this city." Hey, why not wait the 30 seconds and avoid this Mexican standoff then, genius? He's got his gun pointed at Fusco. "You're a survivor," Zambrano says to him. "You gonna choose the right side? Or are you gonna die alone here with your partner?" It wouldn't be alone. Fusco values loyalty. That's how he ended up dirty in the first place. Lionel just eyes him and says nothing.

Outside, they're making good progress with the torch when they hear gunshots inside. Elias waves for them to stop, to give him silence so he can listen. It doesn't matter, they're through anyway. They kick the door down, and Carter and Fusco are there waiting, guns drawn at the door. Zambrano is nowhere to be seen.

"Not one more step, Elias."

Elias looks down. Oh, there's Zambrano, laid out on the floor, dead or close enough.

"Tell your boys to put down their weapons... Or their day will end like Zambrano's over here."

Elias stands without a weapon between two heavily armed goons. Like Finch, he doesn't need to use a gun. His violence comes from his mind and the hands of others. He puts his hands out to give her credit. 

"You're good at your job, Detective. I'm good at mine. I was hoping we could avoid further bloodshed."

"This is where it ends. Right here, right now."

Sirens blare outside. Carter and Elias are surprised. 

"I called for backup," Fusco says. Cop cars are outside now. "You gotta trust somebody, Carter. This guy doesn't own every cop." 

Elias knows when to take the loss to win the greater war. He touches his men's arms to put their weapons down. 

"Get down, get down!" Lionel yells. The goons do as they're told.

"Carl Elias, you are under arrest," Carter says. She's been waiting a long time for that one." He puts his hands out together, ready to be cuffed, willing to do it. This is only a lost skirmish, he knows. "I'll have to check my notes for the list of charges, but murder and kidnapping are at the top."

Fusco cuffs him, but while his hands may be bound, Elias's mouth isn't. "You can't stop the inevitable, Detective." Maybe not, but she can bloody well try. "Change will happen whether you embrace it or not."

Junior sees Elias and flips out. "He was my father! You're dead. No one's ever gonna remember you even existed! You're nothing, you hear me?" Yeah, he hears you. He heard you in 1991 too.

Carter's phone rings and Fusco takes up guard duty again so she can answer it. 

"Talk to me."

"Mom, it's me." Taylor's in the backseat of a car. 

"Taylor." His name is more a benediction than a name. "Are you okay?"

Taylor is a bit more than okay. Despite this experience being ridiculously traumatizing, he's excited by the whole thing. "That guy you sent is kind of a badass." John looks back at him a little over his shoulder from the passenger seat.

"Yeah, he knows it too." 

Finch looks back at him as well.

"Who's the guy with the glasses?" Harold peeks at him in the rear view mirror. All we can see of him are his smiling eyes. 

"You find out, let me know."

"Where are you?"

"I'm safe." She looks over at Fusco. He had her back every step of this way. "I'll see you soon." Lionel gives her a smile when they hang up, happy her son is safe, that everything worked out.

It's morning by the time they can get Taylor to Carter. It's raining, and she waits on a corner with a big umbrella that falls to the side when she sees him running toward her. She wraps herself around him as tightly as she can, as if she can tether him here to safety forever with just the force of her arms and her will. 

John strolls up slowly behind to them, letting them have the moment. 

She's tremendously moved to see John there, this brave, crazy, wonderful man who kept his word to her. She knows he would have died bringing her son back to her without a second thought. He saved both of them last night. She's crying.

"Good to know you keep your promises," she says with a smile. 

John gets to smile back. These moments are what makes his being alive still worth it. These moments are a gift. "I told you I'd never let anything happen to your son." Taylor looks up at him, amazed and a bit intimidated by him.

"Thank you," she says, and that is the breath in his lungs, the beat of his heart. He smiles again, nods and walks away. He and Finch have done their job. They helped an innocent child, they helped a good, kind friend of theirs, and they helped repair a relationship that can help them save so many others. This was a good day.

Elias is getting processed in prison. They make him take his glasses off for his mugshot and he blinks into the harsh light behind the camera. Like Finch, he is a bit naked without his glasses. He lists off his birthdate and Social Security number as they ask for it. 

Don Moretti is back with his dumbass son Junior. "It's good to be back. Let's go home, son." They're some of the few survivors of this mess. There will be much power to jostle for in the days to come.

In the car, they hear a phone ringing. It's not Junior's, and Moretti doesn't have a phone, so... They find it in the glove compartment. Moretti slides it out of a manila envelope.

"Hi, Dad," says the man on the other end. It's Elias, now in prison orange and carrying his blanket and pillow to his new home, a 10'x10' cell.

Inside the envelope is also a picture of his mother, dead on the floor. "What, is this supposed to intimidate me?" Moretti asks.

"I just wanted to say goodbye... and that I wish I could have been there."

And Moretti knows. Justice for that original sin so long ago has found him at last, and there will be no getting away. He looks over at his son, who looks confused. He doesn't understand. He never did. Moretti thought he did, but he picked the wrong son.

Elias is on the line when the bomb explodes and it comes across as a bang and an electronic hiss as the line breaks off. At what's left of the burning car, Scarface looks on and rolls up his car window. The flames reflect in the glass in front of his face. He is still his boss' right hand, no matter where his boss is lying his head these days.

Elias is relaxed as they put him in his cell. Clearly he has privileges here. The guard was behind him for all of that call. When the door slams shut, Elias hands the phone back to him. He and his friends here will have to keep up appearances at least. The guard nods. They have their understanding. Carl looks around at his new reality. This may be a prison, but it is not a cage.


	21. POI 1x20 - Matsya Nyaya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese goes undercover with an armored truck crew, Carter returns to Team Machine, and HR jostles for power in the new organized crime vacuum.

### POI 1x20 - Matsya Nyaya

#### Landmarks

  * Carter returns to the team for good
  * John's hurt badly enough to end up taken unconscious to the hospital in an ambulance and for a while Finch fears he might be dead
  * In the past, it's Ordos and the last doomed mission with Kara
  * In the past, Jessica calls John in desperation and he makes a promise to return to her he is unable to keep
  * Fusco saves John's life for the first time
  * Fusco kills Captain Len of HR



#### Injuries

  * **John**
    * In an armored car that gets tipped over and crashed by an explosion
    * Gets shot in the back in a vest
    * In the past, shot by Kara on instructions from Mark
    * Beaten and pistol whipped by Captain Len while tied up



* * *

...the Indian political theory of matsyanyaya, which proposes that in periods of chaos, when there is no ruler, the strong devour the weak, just as in periods of drought big fish eat little fish. Thus, the need for a ruler was viewed as absolute. The law of the fishes.

* * *

We're starting back in time, 2010, with Kara and John in some CIA black site in Morocco. They have a captive on a chair. His head is drooping. Things have already gone badly for him.

"We could do this all night," Kara says, and she would, happily. "Look at me." In another room, John is watching this on video. Kara's captive leans his head back. He's a few days unshaved, his shirt is open at the neck. She steps behind him. "Sooner or later you're going to start talking to me. Let's try some nonverbal communication." We watch John watching Kara torture this man. His eyes are flat, trying to push down his natural instinct of revulsion to this cruelty. _We're helping, we're supposed to be helping. How can this be helping?_

He pulls out his old Blackberry and takes out the SIM. The real him, all of his true heart that still exists is on the SIM he slides in next. There's a new message, it says. _Voicemail received._ He's calm until the second the voice on the message starts talking. Then his eyes go wide. 

"It's me. Jessica, I mean." As if she would ever need to say. He looks back and forth in a second, startled by both of his worlds colliding at once. This horror landscape he's in right now, and Jessica's soft voice and soft heart across the line on the recording. "I don't even know if you check this number. Um... I need to talk."

It's an incredible danger, but he will not refuse her. He punches in the number.

For Jessica, she's in a separate hell, hiding in her car in the dark of night. She's been crying, and while the tears have stopped, her breathing still catches. When she answers, she lets John speak first.

"Jessica. I got your message."

"I didn't know if you'd call me back." She smiles a little at this tiny window of hope, of goodness in her life. He is a light she thought she'd lost. "We haven't talked in... what, four years?" Like time would matter to him. She could not talk to him for forty years, and he would still miss and love her.

"What's wrong?" He can hear the strain in her voice. "Is everything okay with Peter?"

She nods as if he can see her. She's trying to convince herself too. "Yeah, he's fine. We're both fine." Fine is what you say when you are anything but. "I just... needed a friend that I could talk to." She's not able to hold her tears back anymore.

John wishes beyond anything he could help her, put his arms around her, soothe her, find a way to stop her pain, make things right for her. But he's here in this nightmare instead, thousands of miles away. 

"Something's wrong. Talk to me."

"You know, you were right. In the airport, the last time I saw you. You said that, in the end, we're all alone." 

His heart is screaming, _you're not alone, you're not alone._ But she is. And he is. They are. 

"Jess..."

"Bye, John."

"I'm coming to get you. I'll be there in 24 hours. Wait for me."

She nods, so desperate, so afraid. Her voice is but a whisper. "I'll wait." 

He hangs up. It won't be easy, but he will find a way. He won't leave her like this, knowing that she needs him, that she reached out to him.

And we're back in 2012. 

"It all comes down to a matter of trust," Joss says in a bar. "The foundation of any healthy relationship." She takes a drink. "I just need to know where this is headed."

John's beside her at the bar, sipping a beer. "Trust is a two-way street, Carter."

"I know. I do trust you. _And_ your friend. The two people I know the least. It's the job I'm not sure about anymore. I don't know who's got my back on the force. I'm pretty sure the guy across the desk from me is dirty."

"Well, I'll keep my eye on him." Yeah, thanks, John. He's so unhelpful. He could make at least this part better for her, but he's not going to.

"I need to know more, John." He tilts his head at her. "I need to know just as much as you and your friend do about these cases we're working." She already does. Nine digits. 

John considers. Of course, he already had this plan to begin with, so it's all for show. "Okay. Let's work this one together." He puts down a headshot of some smiling white guy.

The face is familiar to her. Carter turns around. Yep, there he is, in the corner, canoodling with a brunette. She's into him. 

"This guy over here with his girl?"

"Yeah. Only, that's not his girl."

Certainly looks that way as they've moved on to deep kissing. But in storms another woman, enraged. John points. 

" _That's_ his girl."

The woman walks up to the couple and stops at their table. "You worthless, lying dirtbag!" She pulls out a gun."

Carter ends up moving slow enough to allow her to get a shot off, but fast enough to keep the shot from hurting anyone. Everyone screams and scatters. Except for Reese, who's still relaxing at the bar. Carter pushes the woman over the bar like her first case with them, and cuffs her. 

"I thought you said we were working this one together."

"We _are_ ," John says in his most smarmy voice. "You're taking care of the shooter, and I'm making sure the cheating boyfriend doesn't get hurt." Boyfriend is still over in the booth looking stunned, but he's beyond busted. The other woman eyes him. She didn't know about any of this. "Looks fine to me."

Joss scoffs, because she's still stuck dealing with these ridiculous men. Finch chimes in over John's line.

"Mr. Reese, a new number has come in. Have you and Detective Carter wrapped things up on the last one?"

She's walking her perp away. He's smug, smiling. "Just about."

At the station, Fusco's got a guy in interrogation.

"You still haven't told me why you brought me in."

"Police raffle. You're the big winner," Lionel says just before he cuts the feed to the interrogation room video. In walks that HR Captain Len that John almost pushed over a building that time they tried to kill Carter. Fusco doesn't like doing this, but he has no other choice. If he ever wants to be clean, he has to be even dirtier first.

"Where's the money you owe?" says the Captain.

"What? We don't pay the police. We kick back to the mob." Fusco knows that was the wrong answer.

Captain leans in, kicks the man's chair. "That chapter's closed. You pay HR now. Where is my money?" He grabs him by the shirt and drags him to his feet. "I can't hear you!"

"All right. I'll get your money. But I gotta take you there." 

Captain grabs his face, nods. He points at Fusco before he leaves. "You go with him and get it." Poor Lionel. He hates this so much.

At the library, John and Finch are discussing their once and future partner.

"Based on her remarks at the bar, sounds like Detective Carter is eyeing Fusco." Finch is in his shirtsleeves and vest at the cracked glass, taping up pictures, the first step to any of their cases. His job, getting the ball rolling. He looks over at Reese with two photos with scotch tape in his hands. "Isn't it time we told her that he's working with HR at our behest?"

"Not yet," John says, because he doesn't ever do things the easy way. 

"And after all that talk about honesty..."

"It's safer for both of them." Oh, yeah, it's so much safer to have them both afraid of the other one and ready to have to fight. "The less people know about Fusco, the less danger he's in."

"So now you're _protecting_ Fusco?"

"I'm protecting an asset. Who's the new number?"

"Tommy Clay. Lives in Queens. Married ten years to wife Joyce, they have a nine year old son. No criminal record, he pays his taxes, goes to church every Sunday except during football season." Gladiatorial combat, the one true American god. 

"An ordinary guy. What's the threat?" Isn't that your job to find out, John?

Now Finch is the one playing coy. "Did I mention what our number does for a living? Tommy Clay works for Grayling Armored Services." He looks up at Reese. "You'll be a trainee working under him." John's not thrilled that this has all been laid out without telling him. "And today is training day."

John gets to his new job as Finch fills him in on the details. "The crew consists of a driver, Murray Langston, been working at Grayling for 20 years. Tommy is the hopper, the most dangerous position on the crew because he has to leave the truck to pick up and drop off cargo." We see him do just that. He is completely relaxed carrying the bags to the back of the truck, smiling at a man nearby. He probably runs this route every week. These are his regulars. "And then there's the guard. Which is you."

"If the Machine gave us Tommy's number..." 

"Somebody's probably planning a robbery." John as the guard starts shutting the truck doors and takes the opportunity to stick a cam on the back facing out to see anything coming up from behind. "73% of all armored car robberies happen when the hopper's away from the truck, so if they're gonna hit you, that's when it'll happen."

Finch is already on the cam feeds in the library. "GSM link established." It's an endless slideshow of car license plates. "The plate reader will scan any license in its line of sight. Let us know if anyone's following the truck, casing it for a robbery."

John's getting his training in the back of the truck. "First thing, we don't always know what we're carrying."

"It's not on the manifest?" he asks.

"Not specifics, John. Your name's John, right?" What follows may vary, but he's forever John. "Sometimes a client tells us what it is, sometimes they don't. So treat every day as if you're gonna get hit."

"That's a good philosophy for life." It's a bleak one.

"Hey, Murray, Johnny here is a philosopher. Smart." 

"He must have deep thoughts."

"Just don't get caught napping on my watch." Don't worry, he won't.

At their next stop, John is nervous when he reports in.

"These guys aren't ready for any real threat, Finch. Their vests are loose, magazines are stored the wrong way... We need to put a face to the threat."

Finch is wide eyed, taking in as much information as he can as quickly as he can from all of his screens. "Cross-checking every plate from the reader to see if they're being followed."

Tommy gets back, he's impressed at John on guard for him. "You almost look like you know what you're doing. Did you miss me?" he jokes.

"More than you know." Indeed.

"Watch my back, hero." He's trying, guy. You're not making it easy on him.

"Found something. One plate comes up three times _today_. Someone's following the truck."

Just then, the driver comes over the walkie-talkie from the cab. "I got guys headed this way with guns, southeast corner!"

"Go, go, go, go!" Tommy waves at Reese to guard him and the package in the truck. He wasn't going to do anything else.

"What's happening, Mr. Reese?" Nothing he can talk about now, Finch.

John creeps forward along the side of the truck, gun out and ready.

"John, back here! Help!" Oh, no. He doubles back to the open end of the truck. 

Finch, listening, is scared to death. "Mr. Reese?"

And the door of the truck bursts open as he rounds the corner to reveal... Tommy in a cheap rubber monster mask. He's growling, hands out like claws. He has no idea how close he just came to getting his head blown off. 

Tommy laughs and laughs like a jerk as Murray the driver comes around, camera out to commemorate the moment and John's panic. "Smile, rookie!" If John could kill with his eyes instead of his gun, they would be puddles of quivering goo right now.

"Heyyyyy, relax, Johnny!" He's still laughing, and he gestures to John's gun. "That's not a toy, you know, You could kill somebody with that thing." The idiot bros high five each other and shake hands, congratulating themselves on a prank well done. Dump both of them off the pier.

"All right," John says. "You got me." He puts on a smile and walks away while his co-workers continue to giggle together looking at the photo on Murray's phone. "False alarm, Finch. It was just a prank."

"Well, that's endearing." Finch hates these guys too. "Unfortunately, the machine never issues a false alarm. The robbery will happen." Unless it's not a robbery, but you've all decided on it, so...

"And when it does, this crew's in big trouble." He shakes his head and goes back to work.

2010 again, Morocco. Their hostage is still on camera, head low, still strapped to the chair. And who's here but Mark Snow.

"How's our guy doing?"

Kara's beside him, her hair a bit mussed. It's hot in these working conditions. "I'm making progress, softening him up a bit."

"Doesn't matter, you've been reassigned." Mark sticks out in his suit, but sticking out more is the woman in the shadows behind him, also in business wear. "You head out tonight. China."

John steps forward in his black t-shirt. "No can do. I need to take leave. Family emergency."

"You don't have any family, Reese. And I've been assured that the situation is... urgent."

"So find someone else." 

And the woman finally makes her presence known. "There's no time to find someone else." We recognize her voice before we see her face. It's Alicia Corwin. "We've lost control of a certain item. Securing it is the highest priority. Do you understand?"

"We understand," Kara says at John's side. "You lost something. You need us to get it back. What are we looking for?"

"Are you familiar with Stuxnet?"

"Computer virus." John's up on the news at least. 

"Built by us to disable the Iranian nuclear program. The package you're looking for is... similar."

"Only this one targets the Chinese." Kara sees the dots in a line.

"That's correct. We believe someone inside the Pentagon sold a secure laptop containing some of the source code to a Chinese firm. They may be studying the code to inoculate their devices, or they may be modifying the code to target the US nuclear infrastructure." _Any exploit is a total exploit. The tiniest crack becomes a flood._ "Either way, we need the laptop returned."

"Where are we going?" Kara's up for it, of course.

"Ordos," says Snow, like anyone's ever heard of it. "It's a company town in the middle of China. It was built for a million people, only the company that built it folded. It's a ghost town. No residents. So you're going to fly into Beijing, diplomatic cover, two weeks to gather intel, then you're going in."

"The laptop has to be handled with extreme caution," Alicia says. We never see this woman anything less than stressed, usually closer to panic. " _So_ , no phones. No network devices of any kind. The software will exploit any open communication channel. Understood?" She walks away, leaving only Mark.

"Let's go," he says, and Kara does, moving past him at a clip, but then Snow steps in front of John. "Reese. One more thing." He waits until the door shuts behind Kara. "After you secure the package," but he looks behind him anyway because she's incredibly dangerous, "you're to retire Agent Stanton."

John's eyes slide over to the door Kara just walked through, then back to Snow. "You're telling me to kill my partner?"

"We've intercepted unauthorized communications between her and this man," he hands John a picture of someone. We don't get a close look. "A go-between for Hezbollah. Large deposits into an off-shore account. She's been compromised." Mark doesn't flinch with his brown eyes. Everyone is a pawn to him, to be used and discarded at will. "As her partner, you should have noticed." When John still doesn't say anything, Snow makes it clear. "We clean up our own mess, Reese. You know that." He thinks of what he knows will work with John. "You get this done, you can have all the leave you need. You understand?" Way to make it clear it's leaving the mortal coil, Mark.

John makes the smallest nod humanly possible, and it's done. The agreement is made – John will kill his partner and lie to her face until the moment he does. 

John wastes no time getting back on the phone. The number rings and rings. _Pick up_ , he begs with his eyes, _pick up pick up_. But no, it's voicemail. "This is Jessica, you missed me. Leave a message." But he can't, of course he can't, for her sake and his. This is the last moment he will ever hear her voice. "This is Jessica, you missed me," forever and ever and ever.

2012 again and we're in the library. "What are we looking at?" Reese asks, walking around the computer bank while buttoning his shirt. He's putting on his uniform for the armored car job. 

"I've hacked the truck company's servers and retrieved your route for today. If I know the pickup locations, I can narrow down where the robber might hit."

"Carter get back to you on the plate of the car following us?"

"Not yet..." 

Reese's phone chirps. Speak of the devil? Nope, it's their other cop on a leash.

"Lionel." John always has this placid, condescending look on his face when he talks to Fusco. He's never forgotten that Fusco tried to kill him multiple times and failed. "You've been quiet. I was getting worried."

"Yeah, it's like the wild, wild west out here with Lynch. HR's getting short on funds since we took down Elias, so he's chasing down street money with a baseball bat." Are they really that desperate to scrounge a few hundred here and there? Also, these actions John and Finch take have deep repercussions. Finch got Simmons to lay off with Elias, and now that's echoing down the line. And all from trying to save lives here and there. "Not like I didn't have enough enemies on the street."

"Keep gathering intel. We need to know their leadership, take down the remaining players."

"At least I'm getting a cut for my efforts. What do you want me to do with the money?" Now that's something a bit remarkable. Fusco could just take the money, but he works for Reese now and takes that seriously. He has to run it by his boss. 

"I care about HR, Fusco, not the money." Also, John has essentially unlimited funds now, so who cares? He talks in the air with his hands in the library. "What you do with it is your business."

Fusco hangs up. Well, he's got that at least. Turns out he's been waiting to pick up Lee to take him to his sports practice. He looks down in Lee's bag. The shoes and gear are pretty torn up. He's been making do, as all not-rich kids must. Lionel finally has an idea of what to do with this dirty money he's going to get. He wants on the other side, so he wants to use this bad money to do something good.

"What do you say I take you after practice, get you some new gear?"

"Really?" Lee's pretty excited.

"Yeah, why not?" 

At the station, Carter's on the phone. "These pictures you sent over look suspiciously like the ones from our automated license plate readers. Did you take one off my car?"

John's strolling down the sidewalk in his uniform and big bulletproof armored car vest. "Well, no... Not your car." Haha.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Anyway, the plate belongs to a '95 gray Chevrolet van, registered to the 72-year-old transit authority administrator."

"A 72-year-old is casing an armored car?"

Yeah, Carter didn't think that was likely either. "That's why I dug a little deeper." Guy's nephew Frank Lowell was paroled two months ago. He and his buddy who got out last year were busted on armed robbery. So that's good news. I mean, I guess it is, really. Now they know who to look for. "I just sent the photos to you. You might need help with these two."

Ever nonchalant, John keeps strolling. "I got it covered."

It's yet another one of those diners they go to on this show. Does anybody ever eat anything else that's not just take out or greasy spoon? Anyway, the jerk driver is there already eating.

"Hey, did you catch up on your beauty sleep, Sunshine?" Yeah, he did, because John is beautiful, thank you.

"Not so much." He sits down across the table. "I had a nightmare I was working with a bunch of clowns." Yeah, he's done acting here, he can just be honest. These people are a joke.

Murray the driver laughs, sloshes around his coffee cup for another swig. "Yeah, well, that's Tommy. He's always clowning around."

John, ever observant, sees something outside. "Is that Tommy's wife?" Tommy's in the passenger seat of a car while a towheaded boy climbs in the back. Tommy's getting money out of his wallet.

"Talk about a ball buster. I celebrate the anniversary of my divorce like it's New Year's Eve." John has had enough of this guy already. Anyone who hates women like this is trash. And he's stuck working with this garbage. These guys are clownishly unserious and they are his partners to try to thwart a dangerous robbery just about to happen. 

"This job is stressful enough," Murray continues. He points outside. "No one needs that nonsense to come home to, no. Marriage is a racket." John is trapped listening to this MRA asshole. He would love so much to be married, to have someone to come home to.

At least his number doesn't seem quite as overtly hateful. Tommy smiles when he sees John at the table.

"Back for more, John? Oh, I see Murray here skipped his morning pilates again."

"Yeah, I'm starting a new french toast regimen." Now that is one thing I can agree on with this idiot.

Waitress comes over with more coffee and a question. She's a straight woman, and she's seen John for the first time. "Who's your friend, Tommy?"

"John the newbie, Ashley." John turns those blues up to her. "John needs to learn the ropes and I'm the ropes master." Guy, you aren't master enough to tie your shoes. 

"What are you having, hon?" she says to Reese. He's about to reply in that low purr for her but Murray the driver answers for him.

"Something you can put in the bag." Murray and Tommy bicker amicably about breakfast.

"Coffee's fine, thank you." Finally, the girl gets to hear his voice, but it's the "I'm putting up with this" voice, not the good one. 

Murray notices something as he's looking over the girl. "Whoa, that's a nice bracelet. Who's the lucky stiff, Ash?"

She swings back and forth a little, coy. "It's nothing. It's just a present from my grandma." Right. Her grandma bought her a diamond tennis bracelet. She tells Tommy she put extra hot sauce in the bag for him, which immediately gets Murray taunting Tommy for it. 

"Hey, married man over here." 

"Yeah, more like half a man. Alright, ladies, time to punch in." Time to punch in your misogynist face? Yeah, you bet.

In the truck, Tommy's talking to Reese while they're on their way.

"So what's your story, John? You ever been a security guard anywhere else?" Yeah, you could say that.

"Here and there." Classic John understatement. That's another thing he and Finch have in common.

"Mall cop? Supermarket stiff?"

"Something like that." How about international spy and now professional vigilante?

"All I'm saying is, this ain't Walmart." 

"You ever been robbed before?" he asks casually, his hands in his lap.

"Once. My partner and I were servicing this ATM. These two guys came up with guns. I tried to be a hero. Took two in the vest." John is a bit impressed he tried and also deeply concerned he's going to try that again and get himself killed this time. "They got away. I got a set of cracked ribs and a bump in hazard pay." He almost makes it sound like he came out ahead. "Don't worry, most of the job, it's like this, you know? Sitting around in traffic, trying not to get carsick. If the bullets don't get you, the boredom will." Buddy, today is going to be anything but boring.

Finch chimes in. "I've just flagged the gray van's license plate, so the plate reader will alert us just as soon as it appears again." We see plates flashing by on his screen. "I've also been able to retrieve some information from the company's database about your stops today." They're at the first one. "OneState Bank. Your cargo is... their employee's tax returns." Tommy's just doing manual labor with some boxes while John looks on, on high alert. They climb back in the truck, one down.

"Your next stop, Heliogem Incorporated. But the shipment is just low grade stones for industrial use." Again, Tommy's on heavy box carrying, John is ever scouting. Two down.

"Next stop is Regan Medical Supply. Manufacturers of..." he clicks through to a site. "Pacemakers, among other things."

"Those are expensive," John says, although as he adds, "Hardly something you can fence on the street." Once more, Tommy's carrying the heavy boxes, John's on lookout. He chimes back into the driver. "Heading your way, Murray."

But Finch has noticed something, made a connection. "Hang on. The internal manifest shows that you're actually picking up raw materials for pacemakers..." And then he sees it. And he knows. " _Platinum_." More clicking to calculate, bars of platinum come up, as does a chart of its trading value. "Platinum is priced at $1600 an ounce. That's approximately $25,000 a pound, there's 50 pounds..." He's doing calculations in his head, John is moving in front of Tommy. This is it. Whatever it will be, he needs to protect this guy. "Mr. Reese, those cases are worth about $1.25 million. That must be the target."

And as he gets the boxes and Tommy halfway in the truck, John hears tires squeal. They're not going to waste any time. He holds the side of the truck, tense and serious.

Idiot Tommy looks over at him. "Wow, bro. You need to relax." He climbs up in the truck like it's nothing. John may kill this overconfident fool himself. When they're both inside, Tommy knocks to alert Murray and they're on their way again. Well, they have the stuff now. So when does it happen?

"I don't understand," Finch says, pacing around at this point, thinking. "The robbery should have taken place at the last stop. All you've got left is... Dewitt Grocery," he says with a scoff. "That's inconsequential compared–" 

And John never gets to hear him finish that sentence because an explosion under the truck sends it toppling sideways, throwing all the men inside. The truck slides to a stop along the concrete, metal scraping. Everything goes black.

John wakes up dimly, his ears ringing, his own breath all that he can hear. He's mostly upside down, having fallen to the side of the truck. He can't stay with it and fades back out until the sound of bullets hitting the armor of the truck rattles him awake again. That little toehold on consciousness is enough and he drags himself up, throwing the boxes that had fallen onto him off to the side. He stands, gun out, to look at what's happening. Someone is outside shooting to get in.

Tommy's awake enough to be trying to get up, making soft confused noises. John grabs him by the vest, pulls him back down to sit. "Stay here," he says, his voice distorted in his head, everything still ringing badly. 

He kicks the door open, and when he's back out in the daylight and free, he's entirely back in business mode. He doesn't hear the ringing in his ears anymore, doesn't feel the dizzy weakness of recent unconsciousness. He's focused on the mission and getting everyone out alive.

John creeps silently around the side of the truck until he can see one of the men, all in black with a hoodie and a facemask. He blows his head off instantly. There's no kneecaps in this case. John pans over to see the other blackclad attacker holding the driver by the throat as a hostage.

In the truck, Tommy's heard John's shot and starts to get up. But John's still at work. Even though he can barely hear, his aim is as crack as ever. He takes out the man from behind Murray, hitting him without a scratch on his hostage.

He walks toward Murray, who looks at him, shocked and scared. But John gets shot from behind and drops to the ground. From there, he watches Murray take one in the gut and crumple to the ground. He can't do anything about it. He can't do anything to keep himself more than barely conscious at this point. 

It's Tommy behind him, in on the whole thing from the beginning. (Although did he agree to be thrown in the explosion? How did he know he'd be okay?) He steps over John's head casually, carrying the case full of platinum. He walks over to Murray and finishes the job. "Come on, let's go," Tommy says to one of the masked men who apparently survived. They get into a van and take off.

"Mr. Reese? Mr. Reese?!" Finch's voice in John's ear is gradually more panicked and more distorted. Finally, it fades out completely. 

2010 again and the Machine has us in Ordos, China, west of Beijing.

"Alpha team is on-site. They've got their orders, and we've got ours." Mark is somewhere else, somewhere safe, and they are in an abandoned neighborhood that looks like a post-apocalypse movie. "I'll let you know when it's done." We don't know who he's talking to.

"This is where we part ways," says one of the cohort of armed Americans escorting John and Kara to the site. "You're going in alone. Intel says you can expect only light resistance. I've got orders to confiscate any com devices you have." Kara hands over her phone and Reese gives away his only connection to the woman he loves. 

"How do we signal for extract?" he asks. 

"Use these. IR chem lights. A helo's going to meet you at the LZ. You've got 72 hours. We got orders to make our own way back." And part ways they do. John and Kara in their winter gear head out to this cold urban desolation and their security disappears. They're on their own. 

"Bird flu must have been a cover," John says as they walk down some stairs. The Machine has him and Kara both lined in red. Enemies, at least at this point. "The place is under quarantine."

"Scaring the locals. A lot of precautions for a computer virus. I'm not sure we're being told the whole story here." 

" _'Ours is not to reason why.'_ Isn't that what you taught me?" Yours is but to do and die, John. That's the whole plan.

She smiles over at him. "And I thought you weren't listening." 

John brings up his big military gun suddenly. He's noticed something, and what he's noticed is bad. Very bad. There are picnic tables around the corner of the building they're by. And those picnic tables are littered with the bodies of murdered people, slumped and bloody and motionless. Dead people slumped sitting, dead people strewn on the ground, dead people sprawled across tables. John is fairly horrified. Kara is just bemused.

"Looks like we're a little late to the party."

But this is a memory and the present starts bleeding back in.

"Mr. Reese?" Finch's voice again, concerned. The sounds of a hospital, heart monitors, hissing ventilators. A blurry IV bag comes into view. Somewhere doctors are working. "BP's 80/60..." Finch again. "Mr. Reese?" More doctors. "You got that IV running?" "We're clear." Finch, almost whispered, more desperate. "Mr. Reese?"

Reese finally comes around to see Murray lying in a hospital bed next to him. He's slipping away. The doctors perform CPR, pumping at his chest, but it's not working. "BP 70/52. I'm getting no pulse at all." In a few more seconds, he flatlines, and the doctors abandon their attempt to save him.

John closes his eyes, pained. He failed here, misinterpreted what was going to happen and now someone is dead. He always mourns death. While the monitor screeches next to him about Murray's stopped heart, John yanks the IV out of his arm and drags himself up to sit. He's slow, there's blood on him. He's trying to stand without much success when there's a hand on his shoulder.

"Looks like you could use some help." It's Carter, just in time. She touches his face, glad to see him alive. He's definitely glad to see her, to know there are people who care about him and want to help him. That is everything to John. He reaches up to her arm, giving his silent thanks.

She wraps him in a hospital blanket. "Come on. Hold onto me." He does, and she wraps herself around him to guide this tall man forward. He keeps his arm around her back. There are other cops nearby, but they walk behind them, unseen. 

They make it to the hallway, as far as John can walk this pained and stunned and heartbroken. He stares forward. She sits up, turned toward him. 

"Bruised ribs. Bullet hit the vest, broke the skin." She shakes her head. "You're lucky it's not worse." Yeah, he could have just died in the crash too. 

But John is stuck in a guilt loop. "I wasn't supposed to help Tommy. I was supposed to stop him." How could he have known? This job is always about nebulous information.

"Yeah, well, most inside jobs, guy leaves a door open, takes a cut. Guy comes out blasting like this, he better have a well-thought out exit strategy." Didn't seem like he had much strategy at all – he could have easily been hopelessly injured in the crash.

John takes a sip of water from a little plastic cup like they give people to take pills. "This guy's got a family." He won't look at her, but she doesn't take his eyes off him, his bloody skin, his sweaty and disheveled hair. 

"Yeah, we're searching his house right now, bringing his wife in for questioning." She sighs. "He's got to be working with somebody." Who were the two other guys in black?

John's thinking ahead, now coherent enough to actually think through the case. "Well, he needs a fence." For the first time, he looks over at her. "He's still got to flip that platinum."

She's considering that when her phone rings in her pocket. 

"Yeah?" she says to the voice on the other end. "He's right here with me."

Finch is in the library, looking up in the air, and he finally takes a breath. "Oh, thank god." Who knows how long it's been since the explosion. He's been scared for John this whole time, terribly afraid he'd lost him. Carter puts him on speaker, which doesn't seem like the best idea in a public place, but whatever.

He starts talking to John directly. "I tracked your phone to a hospital, but... I didn't know..." He talks in the library exactly as he would if he were talking to John in person, with his hands, his head, his eyes, his heart. 

"It's okay, Harold. I'm still ticking." Murray's not, though. Reese is still torn up about it. 

They both know they have to get back to work as long as they're up and breathing still. "Well, I'm watching the feed we piggybacked off the internal camera in the truck. Tommy had a second phone. Sent a text just before the robbery. He must have been signalling the other robbers." How much of the crash did Finch watch? Did he watch John get thrown and knocked out?

"Well, we gotta track him, Finch. I've got to stop Tommy before he hurts anyone else." He pushes Carter's phone away and stands, ready to get back to the only work, the only thing that matters in his life – saving other people.

In a park, Fusco's watching Lee play street hockey with his new gear. They're happy. Fusco's smile melts away when he sees he has a visitor. A man sits next to him. It's Captain Len of HR again.

"Used to play pickup games here when I was a kid," he says.

Fusco glances over at him, not bothering to hide his contempt. "You were a kid?"

"Got into some fights. Learned how to use my fists... I need you to do something."

"What?"

"Pick up something in Brooklyn. Details to follow." He stands to leave, but he's got more to say before he disappears. "Failure's not an option. I know you understand what I'm saying." Yeah, he does. Captain walks away and the Machine watches him go.

Carter's in interrogation with Tommy's wife.

"Where's your husband, Mrs. Clay?"

"I don't know. I haven't talked to Tommy all day." She's going with sad and scared. Maybe she really is, maybe she's faking.

Carter shrugs. "Yeah, well, he's been busy. He robbed his own truck, shot two people, and you still haven't heard from him."

"Tommy is a good person. He's never talked about stealing anything off a truck." Guessing he never talked about murdering his driver either.

"Is that right?" Carter holds up a small box. "Found this in a closet in your house. It's for a diamond tennis bracelet, part of a shipment Tommy delivered two days ago. But I guess it just fell off the truck."

"A diamond what?" Uh, oh, wife doesn't know.

"Tommy didn't give you a bracelet, did he?" Wife doesn't answer. Carter actually looks sorry for her. This woman was oblivious that she was married to a philandering thief and murderer. 

Later on the phone, she sighs. "Tommy's having an affair. So if we find his girlfriend, we'll find him."

On the other end, Finch talks quietly. "I'm way ahead of you, Detective." He's out at the diner. He's got pie or something on a plate in front of him and a cup of coffee.

"Top off?" Ashley says as she walks by with the carafe.

"Absolutely," he answers, turning his body to see her... and the shining diamonds circling her wrist. He smiles at her, always good at faking friendliness. But his smile dissolves as soon as she's not looking. He clicks his phone.

"Anything yet, Finch?"

Reese is in the library recovering. We see him from behind, the curves of his bare back soft in the shadowed light. There's a large bandage over his right shoulder as he sits in front of the bank of monitors. He gingerly puts his shirt back on.

"Yes, as a matter of fact." He's just bluejacked her, of course. He's scrolling through now. "One number in her call history comes up several times in the last hour. No name on the account."

"Could be Tommy on a burner phone. Can you track him?" Just buttoning his shirt is a painful effort for Reese right now. 

"We'll see. I'm texting him an alluring photo from Ashley's archive..." he says as he flips through sexy selfie after sexy selfie, "...hoping it'll get a quick response." John is furious at even just the thought. He readies his pistol, cocks it. Add one to the useless cocking in the library tally. "When he opens the message, a spyware trojan embedded in the file will send his GPS coordinates."

"Good," John says and he stands, ready to go, even though by all rights he should be confined to a hospital bed.

It's nighttime when Finch gets a nibble on his bait. "Mr. Reese, I got a hit on Tommy's burner phone. He last checked it from the Royce Motel." 

John is there instantly. In the room, it's a bloodbath. The masked men are dead on the floor. "Tommy's not here. But it looks like the robbers that were with him are dead." 

"He's cutting his ties to the heist," Finch says, thinking with his arms folded in the library. "Keeping the loot for himself."

John kneels, reaches down. "Bodies are still warm." He hears a click at the door and rushes to hide with his gun ready. "Tommy's still here."

When a person walks in, Reese throws them to the bed. But it's not Tommy, it's Fusco, and now they're pointing weapons at each other, confused. 

Oh, god, 2010 in Ordos again. All this stuff with Kara is just the worst, most painful. The creepy urban emptiness is oppressive. Giant buildings empty. Huge squares with enormous statues bereft of any humanity. It's just blank death.

Kara kneels to look at one of the dead. "So much for the bird flu. These people were gunned down."

"Software engineers, not soldiers." John is always disturbed when civilians are killed. Really anyone, but especially civilians. "Why kill them?"

They died bad deaths, that's obvious. A bloody handprint is streaked across the plate glass of a window. John rolls a body over, and the man gasps. Good lord, this one isn't dead, just close.

"We got a live one here. Mostly alive."

He begs them in Chinese. "Please give me something... for the pain."

Kara kneels by him to answer him in his language as John stands guard. "What happened here?"

"They came... and took it away."

"Took what away?"

"The machine." Uh, oh... He says it again. "The machine."

Kara does not like that answer, she stands, looking a bit horrified at him.

"What did he say?" I thought John could speak Chinese?

Rather than answer, Kara puts the man on the ground out of his misery. "He said he wanted something for the pain." 

John doesn't say anything, but he doesn't really believe her.

They go inside. More dead, these at desks. Papers and office chairs are strewn everywhere.

"Action here was clean," John says. "Fast. BMR recon team maybe or hired guns."

It's dark back in the server room. They get out their flashlights. It looks like the servers have all been ripped out. Wires hang bare in the racks. John points his light down to a page of Chinese and computer code. And then his light swings over to a glass case. There's a metal case inside.

"Looks like the package," Kara says. 

John carefully pulls it out. "Why kill all these people and leave it behind?"

"Maybe they copied it. Or altered it and left it for us to find." 

John can't look away from this small box that caused so much death, and unknown to him, will cause so much more. "Helo won't be able to pick us up till dark. We need a safe place to wait for extract."

"Safe from whom?" Oh, proper English, Kara? Fancy. John thinks the answer might be him. "We're the only living people in this city." She lights his way back to the door. "After you."

The present again and we're back in the motel with Reese and Fusco. John uncocks his gun, but he's very angry. Fusco drops his too. He looks more relieved than anything. No one is going to kill him and he's not going to have to kill anyone himself.

"I should have shot you and simplified my life." Oh, you wouldn't do that and you know it. Not anymore. You hate him and you love him.

"Pressure getting to you, Lionel?" John straightens his jacket, fixes his collar, looks cool. "Why are you here?"

"Len sent me over. Supposed to meet a guy by the name of Clay."

"HR looking for a cut of the heist?"

"HR helped set up the heist. They hand-picked the shooters." And then John shot them both. "I'm supposed to be picking up their cut."

John gestures toward the door. "You've got a problem. Tommy Clay's long gone." He points down. "And he left his buddies behind."

Fusco turns around to see the dead and empty cases. "Ah, jeez." It's facepalm time. What the hell is he going to do about this? "I don't come back with the platinum, HR is gonna think I took it. That makes me a dead man. You gotta help me with this!" He's getting red, heated, angry and afraid. "You got me working with these guys in the first place." Well, actually, you were working with them dirty in the first place, then you tried to kill Reese multiple times, then he forced you to work with them more.

"I'll find Tommy. Now off you go." John uses his relaxed purr in this insane violent situation. He sits on the bed.

"Off I go?! What am I gonna tell HR, huh?"

"You're a talented liar, Detective, remember? That's why I picked you." That and you saw that he wasn't actually evil, just overly loyal and easily misled. Fusco walks out. What else can he do?

John hits his com. "You there, Finch?"

"Always." I love you, Finch. "If you're calling to ask where Tommy is, I don't know. He destroyed his phone as soon as he left the motel."

Reese looks around the room. "Get anything off the phone?"

"Only that he uses the name Ashley as a password on almost everything."

"Ashley from the diner? Must be love."

"And it's mutual." Finch is often dressed a bit in Joker colors, bright and contrasting, a blue check shirt, a mustard vest, a royal purple tie. "I checked her credit card transactions. She just charged over $5000 worth of Louis Vuitton suitcases." Finch pronounces Vuitton in the French way.

"She's running off with Tommy. I'll try to intercept her, and you try to track down Tommy."

Finch stretches in his chair, hands behind his head, leaning back. His words come with strained breath. "I'm not sure he deserves our protection, Mr. Reese." He winces. He's in more than his usual amount of pain today. This case has been a rough one.

John cocks his gun even though it's useless because he's furious and frustrated. "He killed his friend in cold blood and shot me in the back." He stands, jerks his coat straight again. "I wasn't thinking of protecting him."

Meanwhile, Fusco's trying to talk his way out of a death sentence with HR. He starts with honesty and they start with disbelief.

"You're telling me this guy killed two of our men and took off with all the platinum?"

"Maybe it's beginner's luck."

They're in a warehouse or junk storage. Old electronics and parts lie around. Captain Len has his doubts. "Getting ambitious, Detective? Working an angle?" Well, yes, but not the one he thinks.

"Look, you don't believe me, go to the hotel. There's two dead bodies and two empty cases."

"Thing about angles, Fusco, you add 'em up, always comes out the same."

Fusco just scoffs. "You know, the longer we stand here talking, the further distance this kid Tommy is gonna put between us and our money."

"Assuming you're not shining me on, there's only so many places he could fence the platinum."

"So where are they? We'll divvy them up."

"No. We do it together. That way I can keep an eye on you." Yeah, I mean, if he thinks you took the platinum, why in the hell would he tell you where to sell it, Lionel? 

At the diner, Ashley's getting off work, commiserating about the long day with a girlfriend. They say their goodbyes and she unlocks her car. What a great parking space right by the restaurant. Parking you only get on TV. But she's not alone in the car, of course.

"Hello, Ashley." John is in the passenger seat, head lowered a bit. He scares the hell out of Ashley and she gasps.

"Get out of my car."

"No. Sorry." 

She looks over at him with wide, terrified eyes. Is this man going to hurt her? Kill her? But then she recognizes him. "You work with Tommy. What do you want?"

"You know, that _is_ a nice bracelet." He's looking at her hands with their death grip on the wheel. "Grandma didn't give it to you, did she? But I know who did. Where is he? Where's Tommy, Ashley?"

She keeps her eyes forward, shrugs a little. "I don't know." When it's clear he doesn't believe her, she elaborates. "Honestly, I don't."

"What do you mean?"

She scratches her head, nervous, scared. Her voice trembles. "I'm supposed to wait for him here. He was gonna... pick me up three hours ago, so either something _terrible_ has happened to him or..." Tears slip down her cheeks. She shakes her head. "He's gone without me."

"What was your plan?"

She groans. "I never should have believed him. He said he was going to take me away from all this, and we were gonna go to Cabo together."

"Well, at least you got your nice Louis Vuitton bags." Heh. He just looks at her and steps out of the car. Time to report back in.

"This Tommy's turned out to be a real operator, Finch." Harold looks busy, concentrating and typing. Behind him is the list, the names, the faces, haunting him over his shoulder and in his soul every second of the day. "And right now he's putting everyone in his rear view mirror. You got anything?"

He's got stuff on five different monitors and multiple windows on each. "Tommy's a creature of habit. Uses the same password for everything." Makes life easier for Finch, although really just marginally. He'd be in in an instant anyway. 

"His other habit is buying Symetel burner phones. Symetel leases their numbers in consecutive blocks." There's a terminal window up running a program. We see the code, low level Windows code. "I wrote a script trying the password 'Ashley' on all new numbers, and I found his new phone." Hey, why is Tommy still using the name of the girlfriend he abandoned as his password? Just so he can remember it? Think about it, guys. "Along with a web-based voicemail he received. Listen."

"Got your message," says the voice. "Arturo's Boxing Club. I'll be there in an hour."

"My guess is this is the man Tommy's selling the platinum to. Message was received 45 minutes ago."

Reese sighs. "On my way. Give Carter the address. I'll wrap Tommy up, give him to her."

Finch doesn't waste any time doing as he's told. His hand dances over the buttons to call. Carter picks up at the station as she's dropping off a folder to a uniform.

"What's up?"

"Got a location on the armored truck robber– Arturo's Boxing Club in Queens. John's on his way there." She's about to answer when someone calls her name coming down the hallway. She turns around quickly to hide her face and her voice from them. "Detective, did you hear me?"

She talks low. "Hang up, the CIA's onto me. You'll have to handle this on your own."

Oh, good, it's Agent Snow and his sycophant partner. Great. Carter is equally excited to see them as she snaps the cellphone closed. "Agent Snow and... whatever your name is."

"Evans," he says, as if she gives a shit.

"What do you want?"

"Oh, to say hi, see how you are."

She tilts her head at this worm. "I'm fine. What do you want?"

Evans pipes up again. "We know that you're talking to the FBI about Reese."

"Is there a law against that?"

"As they've proven time and again, the FBI cannot be trusted with matters of national security." Yeah, and the CIA's been really great at that instead. "Do not talk to Agent Donnelly."

Finch is listening to all this, leaning in, worried.

"Oh, you mean about our mutual friend." Interesting she uses the _mutual friend_ name with the CIA goons too. "Why, you afraid Donnelly's gonna get to him first? What exactly are you worried he's gonna tell him?"

"Be careful, Detective," Snow says. "We're closing the net on John. He's good at hiding, but I'm good at finding people." You're not the only one, Mark. "And when I do, you're gonna want to be on the right side of this thing. Don't talk to Donnelly." They leave and she just sighs. What else can she do?

Finch calls in with the bad news. "Mr. Reese, I'm afraid you're on your own now. Carter just had a visit from your old colleagues in the CIA."

"Copy that." John is on his mission now at the boxing club. If he has to do this on his own, he's fine with it.

Inside, Tommy's waiting by the ring, the ropes lined in red and blue. "Who is it?" he asks when he hears the back door slam.

John pulls his ghost maneuver and suddenly appears behind him. "Hey, Tommy," he says in his ominous low purr.

"Johnny..." Tommy smiles, but only for a second because John puts his fist into his face. The idiot tries to attack him, but as always, that is a profoundly bad choice and John gets him in the gut, doubles him over, and throws him into a table face first.

"That's for shooting me in the back."

Tommy gets up again and tries to fistfight Reese, who dodges his punches easily. After two or three, he takes his turn and clocks Tommy to the ground.

"That's for Murray," John says and grabs Tommy up by the back of his coat. He tosses him back onto the table and leans in, looming and terrifying. He has Tommy by the throat. "Where's the platinum?"

Tommy wheezes a laugh. "I'm not telling you."

"You won't get away with this."

In the library, this is the hardest part for Harold, forced to listen, looking up into the air to imagine, to try to see even if he has no ability to do anything constructive at this point. He can be present. He can be with John even if he can't help him. It's the least and only thing he can do, what he used to do with all the numbers before he had help. He can listen and he can hope. Hope John comes out of this safely, hope justice is done, hope his partner can rein in his thirst for pure vengeance.

"You have no idea who you're dealing with," John says, and yeah, Tommy really doesn't. Not with Reese, not with HR.

"You think? I'm just as smart as every one of those jerks."

John doesn't release his grip on Tommy's neck. "Tommy, you were clean. You had a wife, a kid..." John says, furious that this idiot man would abandon that stability and happiness, what John would pay anything to be able to have. "...No prior record. But you threw it all away. Why?"

"Because every day for the last ten years, I've protected other people's money, and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing." Again, we come back to the dominant theme of these early seasons, the wreckage of income inequality and the crash. 

"So the world owes you, is that it?"

"No, it doesn't. I figured that one out. Took a while. You know what else I figured out? Hauling around all that money? You get what you take. So I'm taking mine."

"That's not gonna happen. Thing about striking out on your own, Tommy," he shrugs, still never loosening his grip, "is that's usually how you end up."

"Oh, yeah?" Tommy smiles up, all evil little teeth. "I think you got that just about right."

A gun cocks behind Reese. In his eyes is the realization he read this situation wrong again. 

"Hi, Tommy," Ashley says, pistol held straight out in front of her. John was swayed by her tears, but he should have added up with Finch that Tommy would only still be using Ashley's name as a password if he was still with her.

"Hi, babes. Help me get rid of this mope, will ya?"

John rises, for the first time letting Tommy free to stand too. In the library, Finch's breathing catches. This is bad and all he can do is listen.

Oh, no, 2010 again. There's a monument in an empty park that says in three languages 'Asia Statuary Art Theme Park'. If only anyone was alive to see it.

John and Kara are sitting on the floor together against a concrete block wall in a hallway. Behind them is an open door with leafless trees and the blank winter sky of dusk. Kara eats an MRE out of a packet. She smiles over at him.

"Spent _decades_ trying to invent the perfect nutritional ration." She's finding this amusing, John's not. He's dreading what's coming, what he's been asked to do.

"And it's still inedible."

"It's just a matter of time before this is all obsolete." This is strangely like Root's speech later to Finch about the perfected apple and the obsolescence of humanity.

"We'll still have to eat." John's got his own packet.

She shakes her head. "I'm not talking about the MREs. No. You got satellites replacing surveillance teams, drones replacing fighter pilots."

"So we've outlived our usefulness?" That gets her attention, she looks at him, reading him up and down. "We'll be replaced by a push of a button, is that it?" He takes another inedible bite.

"What do you think?"

He takes a moment, looking past her, deep in his own mind. "I think we're still here."

"You ever wonder where we get our intel?" Kara's looking deep into the distance too.

"I thought you didn't ask questions, just followed orders."

She shakes her head, still not meeting his eyes. "I never said it was easy."

John looks outside to the darkening sky. "Sun's setting. Time to go." He looks grim.

Kara slides the package into her backpack and rises to go to the open door. John stays on the ground, watching her. Only when she's fully outside does he stand to follow. He pulls his pistol out at his side, pointed to the ground, and cocks it. This is it. His orders are clear. His desires, much less so.

Present 2012 again, and Fusco gets a call in the passenger seat of the car with Captain Len.

"Yeah?"

Finch is scraping the barrel. "Our friend is in a bit of trouble." Understatement is Harold's trademark, but the seriousness and worry in his voice is clear. "We need your help."

"Who are you talking to?" the captain barks from the driver's seat.

"Uh, I'm busy right now. I can't talk." He snaps the phone shut. "My ex," Lionel says to the captain. That was the right lie. Len just nods and looks away.

At the boxing club, rather than just kill John, they've decided to tie him up and question him. They bind his hands behind his back with yellow fabric, hand wrap fabric, probably.

"Now you're going to tell me who's coming for us," Tommy says as he ties the knot tight.

Ashley's in more of a hurry. "Where's the platinum, Tommy?"

He's still working on John's restraints, so he nods to the side. "It's over there under the ring in that box with the gloves."

John reads the situation. "So Ashley's the brains, and you're the muscle. Is that right, Tommy?"

Tommy laughs, all he ever does. "We're partners." He sits in front of Reese with more fabric, maybe to bind his feet.

"She convinced you it was time to make your move, didn't she? She said you deserve more from life." He keeps his eyes fixed with Tommy. If there's any way out of this situation, it's dividing these two up.

"Ignore him, Tommy," she says. She and Reese meet eyes, and he sees something in her that Tommy, in his lovestruck blindness, has missed. 

He sits back, a bit stunned. "I'm so sorry," he says.

"Sorry? What are you sorry for?"

"The law of the fishes. I should have seen it coming." His eyes are deep and sad.

Tommy stands, starting to believe this is something. "What are you talking about?"

John can only look up at him. "The people I help, I never know if they're going to be the victim or the perp, but I think, this time," and his eyes drop past Tommy to his future behind him, "you're both."

Yep. Sure enough, Tommy who shot John in the back is shot in the back himself by Ashley. He groans and falls away to the floor. Ashley catches her breath as Tommy is rapidly losing his. His head falls back. It's done.

"Now what?" John asks her from his seat. "You think you're going to walk out of here and live happily ever after? You're dealing with some very bad people."

"Shut up." She really should be listening if she'd like to keep breathing.

"Right now, you have what they want, and they won't stop until they get it."

She lifts the gun at his chest. John looks over at Tommy splayed on the floor. "First time you shot someone?" Slowly he turns his gaze back up at her. Ashley's hands shake on the gun. "First one's hard," he says with real pain and memory in his voice. "You've probably been thinking about it for a while, psyched yourself up. But the second one can even be harder."

Ashley sucks in a breath, takes a step forward, but still hasn't pulled the trigger. She wants to, but she can't. With a small cry, she drops the gun and turns away to grab the bag and run.

John watches her go, but she doesn't get far. On the other side of the ring, she meets her fate. She only makes a little sound as Captain Len drops her with one shot. Reese's head falls back. There's no cavalry coming to help him now. There's only one of HR's leaders and Fusco, who has wanted to kill him for months.

Lionel gets the bag and puts it up on the ring to dig through it. "All there?" the Captain asks.

"Yeah."

Len laughs a bit over his shoulder. "Well, what do you know. You weren't lying after all." Now his focus is entirely forward. "Well, look who's here... Carter's guardian angel." 

Reese glares up silently at this worthless husk. Len bends down to look him in the face.

"Thought our paths might cross again at some point." He pistol whips John across the face. His head jerks sideways. "I think it's your turn to hang off the side of a building." He hits John again the other way. Blood trickles from his mouth.

Fusco yells from behind. "Hey, forget him, let's get out of here."

Len stands straight, shrugs. "You're right. I was gonna have some fun." He laughs hideously. Fusco looks over at the scene, nervous. "But I'll just shoot him."

He lifts his gun and John is half-lidded, accepting the fate he believes he deserves. But for the second time in five minutes, a person is shot in the back just in front of him. Len falls away, and Fusco drops his gun hand.

John cannot believe it. Lionel actually killed a man to save him. They look at each other, an understanding building between them that has been a long time coming. Fusco nods and moves toward him to set him free.

"Mr. Reese? Everything okay?" Finch asks over the line in John's ear. All he heard was gunshots.

"Finch," John says, sounding tired, "we're going to need your trunk."

Fusco snaps another bond in two with his pocket knife. "No, I got this one. I shot him with her gun. Simple enough to make it look like Lynch botched the whole thing." He cuts the last of the ties holding John's hands and holds out his own to pull him up to his feet.

John adjusts his collar, getting some of his natural cool back. "You're getting good at this, Lionel." Good at lying, good at helping, good at being good.

Fusco looks up at him. "I was always good at this. That's why you picked me in the first place." He half chuckles. "Remember?" Awww.

John maybe would have been more responsive, but he's trapped in another Ordos flashback.

"Time to wrap this up, John," Kara says. It is, indeed. She's standing ahead of him in the courtyard by a fire barrel, throwing their signal flares out into the field. He's back in the doorway, watching her, deciding.

He lifts his gun. One pull of his finger, he could be done. He could finish his orders, move on, get that time off he needs. But he'd be killing his partner, shooting her in the back, betraying her. He watches her there, in her fuzzy winter coat, tossing another blue stick into the distance.

But John is John, not the emotionless weapon they tried so hard to make him into. He can't do this and he won't. He uncocks the gun, lowers it back to his side. She tosses another stick and he looks down, trying to figure out what they'll do next.

"Listen, Kara, there's something you need to know."

But he never gets past that, because she turns on a dime and shoots him in the chest. He groans and slides down the wall to the ground. There is a hint of regret in her eyes, the most it's possible for a sociopath like her to have. She would have preferred not to kill him, but orders are orders. 

"Sorry, John," she says as he struggles for breath. "Nothing personal. They told me you'd been compromised. Said as my partner it was my mess to clean up."

He can barely breathe, but still John has to laugh.

"Something funny?"

"I got the same orders as you." It takes him a second to get enough breath to get past that sentence. "Whoever sent us here doesn't want us to retrieve the package. They want to confirm it's destroyed." Blood trickles over his knuckles on the hand covering the hole in his chest. "They want everyone who had contact with it destroyed." His weak voice is not much more than a whisper, but she hears every last word. The horror of realization sinks in. "And you just gave them a beacon."

She turns around and he uses that second to take off running with whatever strength he has left. With Jessica still waiting for him, he has every reason to survive, and so he will never give up trying. Kara looks up at the sound of jet engines, aghast at the truth.

The building is on a camera high above on the plane. "Target locked." "You are clear to engage." The target centers on the flickering lights of Kara's signal flares. "Engaging." 

The distinctive sound of a bomb whistling ever closer through the air rings and the building explodes into a massive ball of fire as Reese limp-runs away. He turns around over his shoulder to see the tremendous destruction. His life as he knew it is burning in front of him. He turns back and walks off into the dark of the night and the unknown future. 

In 2012, John walks into the library and up to the cracked glass. Tommy's face is still on it, and Finch in his finery best is standing in front of it, grimly considering someone who was on both sides of the deadly game they spend their lives intervening in.

"Did we actually accomplish anything here?" he asks.

John looks over, considers. "We stopped Tommy from getting away with murder. That's something."

Finch glances over at him, but his eyes return to Tommy. He's not sure he agrees.

"He didn't stand a chance, did he?" Harold turns and limps back to firmer ground, his desk and his computers.

John touches the picture. "Problem with trying to be the bad guy... there's always someone worse." He tears it off the glass. It's a blank slate again for the next person they won't have any idea if they can trust.

The Machine is doing her own work. A phone conversation plays. There's a picture of John and Kara in the Ordos building.

"Hey, we got a lead on Reese," Mark says. "An asset in North Korea." Another picture pops up. "A dissident group helped an injured CIA operative escape from a town near Ordos, China, May 2010."

"Ordos?" says his partner. "Must be our guy."

"The asset pointed us to a bank account out of Grand Cayman. Same account was accessed two days ago at a bank across the street from the Royal Manhattan Hotel. Meet me there."

Snow and his lackey make their way into a dark hotel room with their guns out. There are weapons all over the couch, all kinds of devices for killing. Mark looks back at his partner. _Are you seeing this?_ They advance toward the sound of a running shower. Snow delicately opens the bathroom door in silence and steps into the steam filled room. 

His partner is still working through the bedroom, and he sees a pair of shiny high fashion yellow and black pumps on the ground. That is the last thing he sees as he takes a silenced bullet into his spine. Snow comes out of the bathroom in time to see his body and get shot himself. He drops to the ground groaning, writhing in pain.

Out of the shadows, Kara steps, alive and kicking. 

"Hello, Mark," she says above him. "Have a seat." Just as well, he certainly can't stand. He looks up at her from the floor, half in disbelief, half in frustration that he never even considered she could be alive too. "We have some catching up to do." All Snow can do is look up at his future and his doom and try to keep breathing.

* * *

#### Prompt ideas

  * Hurt/comfort whump just after the ep, when John and Harold are in the library, exhausted and disappointed. John is still in bad shape, holding himself up on adrenaline. Once it's gone, he doesn't have much left. He turns to go and winces or stumbles. Harold can see he's struggling and not taking care of himself and so he intervenes.




	22. POI 1x21 Many Happy Returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harold gives John an apartment instead of trust or truth, and Carter discovers the bleak tragedy of Jessica's death that made John into the man he is today.

### POI 1x21 - Many Happy Returns

#### Landmarks

  * The story of Jessica's life and death is uncovered by Carter
  * John asks Carter for her trust to do what needs to be done and once again shows her he keeps his word
  * While ostensibly trying to protect him, Finch lies to Reese as he promised he never would and it backfires
  * Carter finds John's records or what is left of them and destroys them
  * Carter finds the happy picture of John and Jessica and keeps it
  * Finch knew about Jessica (and John and Peter) in the past from the Machine but couldn't prevent her death
  * In the past, John and Finch briefly meet on the worst day of John's life while Finch is in the hospital still unable to walk



* * *

John is remembering his old words, the _one person_ speech, remembering Jessica sliding away from him, watching the towers burn on TV in Mexico, walking away from him at the airport, believing he'd be there on the phone. Finally we see him getting shot in China. Now he's on a bus, bleeding from that gunshot wound still, half bearded, broken.

A little boy in the Little League team also on the bus talks to him. "Are you okay, Mister?"

John looks over at him, hollow.

The boy is scared. "What happened to you?" He can see the blood seeping through Reese's shirt from his barely treated gunshot wound in his stomach. John buttons his jacket closed to hide it.

He looks dazed, lost. "I think I quit my job."

The bus driver comes over the PA. "Next stop, New Rochelle."

But that was 2011, and now we move forward to 2012 again.

In the library, John's reading some textbook about stress fractures in titanium, a metaphor perhaps. He waves his fingers without looking as Finch comes in.

"Morning, Finch." Reese is deep in his book. Finch, looking impeccable as always, stops cold. Reese isn't supposed to be there. This is going to make things harder. He blinks twice and steps forward.

"You're off to an early start, Mr. Reese."

"Maybe I'm trying to impress the boss." He's impressed, but not in the way he wants to be today.

"You should have called first." He hangs his coat. "As it stands, our docket is clear."

"We don't have a number?"

"You sound disappointed," Finch says with a little too much enthusiasm. He's overselling the lie and he realizes it. He turns himself away one way then the other. Awkward.

"Oh, a little surprised. No one in New York is in danger, planning to hurt someone?"

"If they are, they're keeping it to themselves. Anyway, I think you've earned some time off. Especially today."

Reese catches that and turns his head. He isn't happy. This is more asymmetrical information that Harold knows.

"Or did you think I didn't know?" Finch smiles, reaches for his pocket. He presents a tiny box with a ribbon. "Happy birthday."

Reese takes it, and alarm becomes surprise becomes gratitude. This is an open kindness from Finch. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Now go," he says, still smiling, shooing him away. "Do whatever you do when you're not here."

Reese stops. 

"You don't know what that is?"

Cultivated affront from Finch. "I respect your privacy, John." 

John looks at the gift in his hand, physical evidence of the fiction of that statement. "Obviously."

They're both so aware of each other. Finch watches him go, his smile melting away before he sits at the desk. John turns back, knowing something is strange, but then it is Finch and things are often strange. Harold looks once Reese turns back, making sure he goes completely. There is work to be done.

And he wastes no time getting to it. There's the new number.

Of course the picture is the most scared and lost looking beautiful woman. Finch is all seriousness in his eyes as he views her information.

We're out in the park and look, it's Reese's ludicrous old, wise, and blind Asian stereotype Chinese chess player friend who we never see again.

Reese makes a play on the board. "Horse 2 to 3."

Han laughs. "Are you sure?"

John's amused too. There's a genuine smile on his face. "You tell me, Han."

"As I recall, John, you don't make any move you're not sure of. You're not working today?"

"My boss gave me the day off. It's my birthday."

Han congratulates him in Chinese and John thanks him in English. "Did you get any gifts?"

"One." He opens the box, pulling the curled ribbon. It's a very Finch gift, a small metal key devoid of any explanation. John slides it into the man's fingerless gloved hands.

"A key? To what?" says the old man.

John's eyes are distant. Finch is always so inscrutable.

"Good question."

Elsewhere, it's FBI Agent Donnelly. Again.

Carter is just thrilled to see him. "Special Agent Donnelly. How goes your hunt for our mystery man?"

"That's why I'm here. I promised I'd keep you in the loop on our investigation." He takes her into a quiet room and opens his briefcase. "So... we'd been looking into a smuggling ring that was broken up a couple of months back. The leader was suspected of having CIA ties, but he skipped before he could be charged."

"I recall." Hmm, she may have some recollection of the shootout she was involved in that ended that ring, yes.

"Yeah, well, we think your guy was working for him. CSU found prints and some carbonized blood, along with the body of a member of the ring in the trunk of a burned-out car." She remembers John rolling out of that trunk in front of her, shot and beaten. "When they ran the blood, they got a DNA hit on a cold case up in New Rochelle from 2011." Donnelly's way too excited about blood.

"What kind of cold case?"

"Suspected homicide. Real estate developer named Peter Arndt."

That strikes Carter as strange. "Real estate developer?" 

"Arndt was up to his eyeballs in debt. Lost his investors' money." She looks down at a picture of Peter, looking dark eyed, worn, just dark. "We think one of them had him taken out, hired your guy to do the job. And he made some mistakes. Now someone in New Rochelle has to know something, and then we'll be close."

"Close to what?"

"Finding out who this man really is."

She looks up at this driven fool, close enough to be dangerous, but so far from anything resembling the truth about John as she knows him. "Ah. Well, um, thank you for the update." 

"How'd you like to assist?"

"Assist?"

Oh, yes, Donnelly nods. He's all in for it. "Up in New Rochelle."

"I would love to, but, uh..."

"Think about it. I mean, you're the reason we're onto this guy." Yeah, she's aware. "You should be part of taking him down."

"I'll let you know." Donnelly thanks her and leaves as her phone rings.

It's Finch, shorthanded. "Hello, Detective? There's something I need to discuss with you."

She purses her lips, considering what to do with Donnelly. "Yeah, I got something for you too."

At the noisy bar, Finch in his three piece suit sits in a booth and rotates his one-third drunk beer (lager, cheap looking) nervously in a circle on the table.

Carter arrives, taking in the incongruity.

"Never pegged you as the cues and blues type."

He smiles. "All the more reason to come here, Detective. Once we become predictable, we become vulnerable." Poor Finch, ever seeking safety by pushing everyone as far away from him as possible.

"If you say so."

He takes a sip, overly casual. "When I called you said you had something for me."

"Know about a case up in New Rochelle?"

Harold blanches, beer glass in midair, his eyes wide. 

"I'll take that as a yes. FBI linked your partner's DNA to a crime scene."

He looks off into the distance. This was inevitable to come to haunt them and haunt them it shall. Carter will have to know the truth. She may as well discover it for herself to understand.

"Agent Donnelly, no doubt."

She unhappily twists the straw in her fingers. "He wants me along for the ride."

"Perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, if there was any evidence that threatened our mutual friend, I'm confident you would find it before Donnelly would."

"Are you suggesting I obstruct a federal investigation?"

"Of course, what you _did_ with that evidence would be entirely your concern."

Finch looks at her flatly, his mouth small and tight. He resolutely calls people's bluff.

She's still thinking.

"You wanted to talk to me about something."

Harold waves his hand in the air, theatrical in his denial. "Oh, it was nothing important." Here she should suspect something is up because Finch does not call to bring up things that are not important. "We'll talk again when you get back." More smiling, trying overly hard to sell it.

She nods, still too hung up on the situation with Donnelly to look hard enough at what is happening in front of her. 

"Thanks for the drink."

Finch is all friendly smiles that evaporate the instant Joss is two steps behind him. He gets out his laptop. He's going to have to find another way. Down the chain of dependability and trust he goes. 

Then there she is above him asking about another drink, the day's number, smiling and friendly. And there she is on the laptop screen, trapped in a moment looking terrified and hunted.

Back in February of 2011, John can't find Jessica. She's not answering her phone. He only gets her message again, her voice forever telling him, "This is Jessica. You missed me." 

He goes to the hospital she works at to find her. A woman at the front desk sees him.

"Do you need any help?"

"Yes. I'm, uh, looking for someone. A nurse. Jessica Arndt." He's so worn here, eyes tired, face covered in a rough and short graying beard. "I'm an old friend. She might not work here anymore. She was always talking about moving away."

As he speaks, the face of the woman in front of him falls. Her voice trembles. "Um... I'm sorry to have to tell you this. Jessica died in a car accident." 

And you can see in his eyes the moment John's heart shatters. The only reason he had to keep going, what dragged him off the ground in China, what kept him walking, kept him standing to this moment is gone. All of it, everything, was for nothing.

"About two months ago," she continues. Two months. He missed saving her life by two months. She was alone and she died that way. John's eyes wander, lost. Why is he here, why is he breathing and she is not?

To no one, to the universe, he speaks, staring into space. "She said she would wait." 

"I'm so sorry. I think I have her husband's number here, if you wanted to reach out." Yeah, he'll reach out. Peter's all that's left of her. The monster that took her is all that remains. He wanders away as the woman goes to look up the information. By the time she looks up again, he's gone.

On his way out, he stumbles by a man in a dress shirt in a wheelchair. "Sorry," the man says, but John can barely hear him. He can barely understand why his heart is still beating.

Now in the present we've got Fusco on the case.

"Has she left the apartment?" Harold asks.

"Not yet. Hey, what's your interest in this broad anyway, Finch?" Gee, I don't know, Lionel, maybe the same thing it always is?

"It's not your concern," Finch says, too busy working on his feet at his desk to be annoyed. "Just keep an eye out."

Fusco brings up the woman on the police computer in his car. "Karen Garner. She's wanted for identity theft, passing bad checks. Warrant's out of Detroit. Your girl's a felon."

"Yes, I'm aware of her apparent troubles with the law, Detective." His eyes narrow behind his glasses. "But I'm more concerned that she may be in danger."

"What makes you think that?"

"Karen Garner is an alias. It's only been around for three months." His brow is furrowed as he reads and works. He's taking this one hard. "She has no credit history, she only leaves the apartment to go to work, and she's constantly looking over her shoulder."

"Sounds like she's hiding out."

"Or on the run, more likely."

"Or maybe she's laying low trying to plan something."

"Yes, perhaps she's a master criminal!" Finch is getting testy now. "But maybe she's just a scared woman trying to stay a step ahead of her abuser." Finch and Reese know the danger women live in every day.

"Yeah, right. Lemme ask you something. Why am I planted out here instead of Wonderboy?"

"Mr. Reese is otherwise engaged, and you are _not_ to contact him regarding this matter, Detective. You and I will handle this ourselves." Finch is pure concentration on his work.

Meanwhile, in Reese's hilarious 1940's noir bachelor desperation apartment, he's out of The Suit and is down to his most human and vulnerable white t-shirt. He's making coffee in a grungy ancient style metal percolator right on the stovetop. 

We zoom out to see his apartment a little more. It's a New York nightmare. Bare walls, a terrible long fluorescent bulb lamp like in old people's bathrooms. He has a small pot, a toaster, a cutting board. The bare minimum. His window faces nothing, his blinds are open to the nothing. He has some shelves with old style cans and small food boxes, none with any color or identifiable brand. It's all blank boredom and hopelessness. He's listening to scratchy announcing of a baseball game on the oldest analog clock radio in existence. He peers desperately out the window for something, anything.

The only way to tell this is even happening in the 21st century emerges from his pocket. _No New Messages_ his phone says for likely the thousandth time. It is Tuesday April 24th, 8:08 am. Even the numbers seem hollow. This will be a long empty day. A day without purpose.

In New Rochelle and Carter arrives to find Donnelly.

"Detective Carter, welcome to New Rochelle. Glad to see you took me up on my offer." He walks her through the Arndts' house. "Here's what we know. Arndt was it playing fast and loose with his investors' money. He ended up losing it on bad land deals and a gambling habit. When he exhausted his line of credit, he was forced to take money from less reputable lenders." 

"Loan sharks." She looks down again at that generic picture of Peter.

"His bookie gave us the name of a couple local guys he introduced Arndt to, and we're checking it out."

Carter's still reading the file. "Says he was married. Wife deceased. What happened to her?"

"In a car accident, two months before Arndt went missing. Bad one. She was killed, he nearly was. But anyway, by that point, Arndt was completely underwater. Shortly after he left the hospital, he went missing."

She flips through the crime scene pictures. They're ugly, things in the room scattered, blood on the carpet, blood splattered across the broken glass of a fallen picture frame.

"They find a body?"

They walk into the living room from the pictures. "No, but given the amount of blood spilled, it's doubtful Arndt survived."

"Doesn't sound like my guy's MO. He usually covers his tracks."

"That's another reason we think it was his first job. It was messy, violent. Probably figured it would be easy, then found out he had a fight on his hands." Donnelly's phone chirps. It's news he likes. "We located one of the loan sharks." He goes to leave, but she calls after him.

"Did you talk to the local detectives?" 

"No, I had their files sent over."

"I'd like to speak with them." As Finch predicted, she's after the real thread while Donnelly chases ghosts.

He's all for it. "Sure, great, let me know if you find out anything."

"Will do," she says as he leaves, but her worried eyes make that doubtful.

Fucso's on the woman's tail as she comes out of the 125th Street station.

"Anything yet, Detective?"

"Yep, our girl's on her way to work. And you're right, someone's got this girl spooked." Fusco is realizing Finch's instincts are good and his cynicism may have been misplaced. Poor girl, two strange men are following her now.

"How long am I gonna have to tail her?"

Finch is at the cracked glass workboard. "Long enough for me to identify who she's hiding from."

But Fusco's already lost her immediately. He walks into a bodega, can't see her. When he asks about her with his badge out, the clerk says she asked to use the bathroom in the back.

"Detective...?"

"Hang on."

Waiting for results on just sound alone, Finch stands anxiously in the library. And there's his result, unmistakable.

"So if I were to speculate as to the reason for your labored breathing, Detective..."

"I lost her."

"That would be it."

"What do you want me to do?"

Left with nothing else but his own devices, Harold grabs his coat from the rack.

"Go back to your day job. I'll handle it from here."

Finch is back at the pool bar. He sticks out like a sore thumb, even more so when he starts asking questions to the bartender about his "neighbor".

And he's followed by a creepy dude in a leather jacket who comes up on him from behind on the street.

"Excuse me. I couldn't help overhear your conversation at the bar. You're friends with Karen Garner?"

"Well, more of an acquaintance, actually."

"Brad Jennings, US Marshals Service," the man says, flashing his badge. Uh, oh.

But Finch is cool and calm and doesn't break eye contact, fishing for information himself. "Is Karen in some kind of trouble, Deputy?"

"Karen Garner, also known as Sarah Jennings, is a wanted fugitive. I'm trying to locate her."

"Sorry, I don't know how I could help you." 

"Well, I thought I heard you say you were neighbors."

" _Yes_ , you did." You can see the internal swearing behind Harold's eyes. He's trapped himself in his own lie.

"So maybe you can tell me where you live, Mr....?"

He tries for the smile again. It's worked twice to cover lies already today, maybe it will work again. "I'm sorry, Deputy, I prefer not to get involved."

Third time charm is not a charm. 

"I'm not asking you to get involved. I'm just trying to get your address. Now, if you prefer, we can do this down at the field office."

Finch is clearly weighing the terrible choices before him when a familiar set of shoulders appears behind Creepy Deputy. His eyes widen with surprise but his lip curls in the slightest hint of relief.

"Hello, Harold."

Reese, now suited up and in his full powers, is all business with Mr. Deputy.

"Detective Stills, Organized Crime." John has his own badge to intimidate with. "This guy you're talking to is my C.I.."

"He's a confidential informant?"

"And money launderer for the late Don Moretti."

John takes Harold by the arm, extracting him physically. Finch keeps his eyes low and beaten until they're past the man, then he looks John over. _How did you get here? Why?_

"Hey, I've got some questions for him," protests the deputy.

They turn around. Reese keeps his hand on Finch's arm, keeping him protected and in his possession. Finch looks back with some fear at the man who could arrest them both.

"You were risking his cover by even approaching him. Let's go."

Reese pulls Finch quickly along the sidewalk, almost dragging him, furious. 

"What did he want?"

"Just to ask me some questions," Finch says as he is deposited into the back seat of the car.

"Funny," Reese says, his voice pulling down lower into anger, never blinking as he stares Finch down. "I've got a few of those for you too, Harold."

Back at the library, no one is happy.

"So am I to assume that you were following me?" Harold walks fast, talks fast, shivers his shoulders out of his coat to hang it.

"I think the bigger question is... are you working a case without me?"

Finch settles into his chair, speaking not directly to John but to the wall, his words fast as they always are when he's upset. 

"I feared that with this case, you had certain sensitivities. I thought it best to let you sit it out."

Harold looks down, grim. There's no way out now. 

"What kind of sensitivities?" 

He starts in with the facts of their number as he walks to the glass with this case's information.

"Her name, or at least her aliases... are Karen Garner and Sarah Atkins. She has outstanding warrants for identity theft and passing bad checks, but I don't think she's a potential perpetrator. I believe that she's on the run from someone."

Finally he looks up at John.

"Who?"

Finch's voice is hurried, stressed.

"Likely someone she was close to."

They both know what that means.

Harold takes a breath, puts his hand on his aching hip and looks away to remember.

"When I was first building the Machine, I kept seeing the same numbers come up – a week, a month, six months apart." Half in shadow, he pauses, tensing. His eyes narrow, and he tilts his head, sighing a bit as he holds up a finger remembering the chain of discovery and its agonizing meaning. "Usually women." Another pause full of pain. He licks his lips. "At first, I thought it was a mistake. How could anyone's life be repeatedly threatened? And then I realized... they were _living with_ the person who would eventually kill them."

They are both clearly upset, but John is overflowing with silent fury and pain. Finch limps past him to return to the desk. The explanation given, now there was only the case at hand, the still living woman who needs their help. Maybe John will understand that, if nothing else.

"I've been working to uncover who she really is. It might help us identify the threat."

_Us._ Reese can't miss that word. _Us_ , but Finch deliberately excluded him, not trusting him enough for the truth.

"Send me her address," he says in his whispered, threatening growl. "And we'll finish discussing my _sensitivities_ later."

Finch sits back, caught and sad and guilty. There is so much pain this is going to cause. And there will be so much work necessary to even begin to regain what he's lost of Reese's trust.

At her apartment, the girl is breaking into her own place from the fire escape to climb in the window rather than use the front door. 

John is incredibly alarming sitting by her bed all nonchalant with his legs crossed. Doesn't he realize this woman is already terrified of men?

"Hello, Karen. Or do you prefer Sarah?" John's working it out.

She pulls out her gun, points it at him. "Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who wants to help you." Wants to help you more than you can know.

She steps forward. "You a cop?"

"No. But I know you're running from someone. Who is it? Boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend? Husband?" She looks away just enough. "Husband."

This hurts so much, this chance to help Jessica by proxy. How he failed before, John is desperate to amend. But this poor girl doesn't know any of that and has no reason to trust him.

"I'm going to ask you one last time." She takes another step forward. "Who are you?"

Finally he makes any indication he's seen the gun pointed at his head at all. He holds his hands up so she can see.

"My name's John," he says, slowly leaning forward, lowering his hands. "And I help people out of tough situations."

"What do you know about my situation?"

"I know it was bad enough for you to leave your home, your life, everything. And I know you'll have to keep running, Karen... if nobody stops him."

Slowly, she lowers the gun. It's been so long since anyone has known, has believed her. She's just so tired. "It's Sarah. My name is Sarah."

"What if I said you could stop running, Sarah?"

"I'd say you don't know my husband."

In his ear, John listens to Finch. "Mr. Reese, I traced Karen's former alias, Sarah Atkins, to a Chicago apartment where she was living. Building manager said she paid rent using checks with a different name. He's sending me one of them now." The interlaced image resolves on one of his monitors. "Sarah Jennings." It takes him a second, but then it hits him hard enough to push him back in his chair. " _Jennings_. He's her husband."

"He's the marshal," John says aloud to both of them as he realizes it too.

"How did you know that?" she asks, startled.

"That's not important." He stands before her. "What's important is we can help you."

"We?"

"I have a colleague who will watch over you while I take care of things." He begs her with his blue eyes. _Please let me help you. Please let me make at least this right._ "We need you to stay here."

"What is it you're gonna do?"

He smiles gently. "Make it so you don't have to be afraid anymore." That is the saddest, most heartbreaking way to put it. But it's exactly what still tears at his heart about Jessica. She died alone and afraid. She was afraid for months before, years. He will be damned if another woman he knows of will die the same way. He's damned already.

Sarah's eyes sparkle with held tears. She's so exhausted from being afraid.

Back to New Rochelle, and Carter is working her case.

Random detective has info.

"That's everything we have on Peter Arndt," she says as she hands over a file. 

"Thanks. Did this look like a professional hit to you, Detective?"

"Hard to say. We don't get a lot of contract killings up this way. But this guy Arndt owed a lot of money to some dangerous people." Carter flips through the file. There's Peter again, followed by pictures of a car plowed into a tree, its metal bent and crushed.

"And this?"

"Accident report from a car crash Arndt and his wife were in. Single car, husband swerved to avoid a deer, wife was killed." Carter flips another page to see Jessica, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. "It's a hell of a thing. Guy survives a crash like that only to get taken out two months later." It is indeed a hell of a thing. Carter has her suspicions they're not unrelated.

Flashback to Peter after the accident. His leg is broken and he pulls the velcro straps taut on his soft cast. Jessica's picture is on the table along with a dozen or so sympathy cards. He heads outside to get in his SUV. 

In the distance in his own car, John is watching, his eyes cold. He breaks inside. All the condolence cards are there along with wilted bouquets of funeral flowers. Jessica smiles at him through the glass of the picture frame he picks up. He will never see that smile on her face again.

He gets out his phone. As before _No New Messages_ , but this time, he keeps going to the saved messages, all he has left of her. 

"It's me. Jessica, I mean." Flashing further back. She's in her kitchen, afraid, her voice barely above a whisper. "I don't even know if you check this number. Um... I need to talk."

But she can't because here's Peter coming back in from the deep dark of the house. 

"Oh, you scared me," she says. He scares her a lot now.

"Who are you calling?"

"Nobody."

He gets a beer, because alcohol is definitely going to help this situation. "That's funny, it sounded like you were calling somebody."

She shakes her head, afraid. He sips his beer and never lets her out of his sight.

Back with John, and she's still in the picture, smiling and free. But John is not. He will never be again.

Carter is investigating the car crash with the coroner.

"Jessica Arndt, pretty girl, dead on the scene. Blunt force head injury from the rollover. No seatbelt." We see her there, motionless in the passenger seat of the smashed car, her face away. At least she can't see all the broken glass, the smoking engine.

"Do you still have her x-rays?"

He brings them up on his computer. Her skull fracture looks horrifying in black and white. It's a crawling line, a bolt of broken lightning.

"In your report, you identified two previous fractures, a broken wrist and cracked rib. May I?" She comes closer to use the computer herself. She points at another x-ray. "Is that a spiral fracture?" 

"I suppose it is."

Carter knows full well what that means. "She'd get that from having her wrist twisted, _hard_ , as opposed to falling on it, right?"

And we're in Jessica's last moments as Carter puts it together.

Peter takes her wrists in his hands. 

"You're hurting me."

Carter again. "One other thing. You listed her cause of death as... blunt force trauma to the head and a broken neck."

"As I said."

We see and Carter imagines Jessica in the crashed car again, this time close enough to see Peter too slumped forward onto the steering wheel. But he's still moving.

"Could someone suffer those injuries if the car's front and side airbags deployed?"

"Not likely, but a body is subjected to extreme forces in a crash like that."

"Is it possible she could have had these injuries before the accident?" 

Jessica in the kitchen again, Peter holding her wrists. 

"You're hurting my arm." She tries to get away, the last thing she will ever do.

"Get back here!" and Peter drags her by force back into the kitchen and throws her.

On the way down she hits her head on the kitchen island and Jessica falls dead to the floor. She didn't even get a chance to fight.

As so many gross abusers, Peter finally cares now that he's killed her. Calls her baby, calls her Jess. He gets the phone, gets as far as 9 and 1 before he realizes he is a murderer now, and if anyone finds her like this, everyone will know. He puts the phone back down.

Carter's coroner is totally dismissive of her theory. "Detective, I don't know what cases you're used to seeing down in Manhattan, but up here, car crashes account for most of my business. Just because something's possible doesn't mean it's probable."

But she knows she's right. And now she knows how useless justice is here. She gets a call from Donnelly.

"Detective, I'm heading up to speak with Arndt's closest family, his mother-in-law, see if she knew anything about his money problems."

"Send me the address, I'll meet you there."

Back in the city, Finch is working the husband angle from the passenger seat. 

"I'm watching Sarah's apartment and I'm tracking the GPS on her phone, Mr. Reese. I've also discovered some new information about her husband." He's reading and learns as he speaks. "According to the Denver public records database, Jennings was sued twice for excessive use of force on the job. Both cases were dismissed." His voice lowers as he reads on, makes connections, ugly ones. "He _falsified_ the warrants on Sarah. Trumped up the charges to enlist the entire US Marshal service in helping him stalk his wife." More utter failure of justice for these women.

"That's why she can't stop running," Reese says, all cold fury. "Only one way to deal with guys like this, guys who hide who they really are until they get home."

His fierce tone is scaring Finch. He adjusts his glasses in his anxiety but his hand is shaking. "What will you do, Mr. Reese?"

"Show him what a real monster looks like." John sees himself as irrevocably broken, a monster. That decent, pure part of him is dead, but the righteous fury part of him remains and can at least be used to try to partially make up for it.

He pushes the door open at the Marshal's office, and casually a fugitive walks into the lion's den.

His suit is like a passport, everywhere he goes people just assume he's supposed to be there. Marshals nod as he passes.

He walks straight at the husband, his face blank.

"Detective... Uh, what was it? Stills? You have a change of heart about me questioning–" 

And John is upon them, punching Jennings in the chest and clocking out the guy next to him before tossing him aside. He takes out two others who try to intervene before grabbing Jennings by the throat. The man's face is red above John's clenched fingers.

Finally we see Reese's face again, right up next to his prey, his eyes unblinking and glistening with tears of futile pain and fury that will not fall.

"Your fellow deputies know why you're here?" His breath comes fast and hard. "Chasing your terrified wife? If you come after her again... I will kill you." There is no bluff in the threat. It is plain fact.

Finch is listening and terrified in the car as Reese continues his litany. Death is exactly what Finch is driven to prevent, not cause.

"No one will be able to protect you from me." The sound of a gun cocking, a man choking and unable to breathe. "Do you understand?"

Reese drops the maggot husband who crumples to the floor, then he casually tosses aside the gun. He doesn't need it. There are so many better ways to kill this guy should it come to that. He walks out, furious but beautiful in the suit. One last guy gets clocked on his way to the door.

Back in the car, Finch's computer beeps. Signal connection lost, device not found. He rushes into Sarah's building.

"Finch, we're gonna want to move Sarah to a safer location."

"Agreed. And then maybe you can explain the wisdom of antagonizing an entire law enforcement agency."

At Sarah's apartment, the curtains flutter and her phone sits crushed on the floor. She's in the wind. 

"Mr. Reese, we have a problem."

Sarah's at the train station, trying to get to New Haven, but she's been made by the ticket taker. Transit cops throw her to the ground.

Fusco's eating and calling Finch, who has been frantic, trying to trace Sarah from the library while Reese paces like a caged tiger behind him. 

"I just heard on the radio your girl got popped. Down at the train station. They picked her up on a marshal's bolo."

"Where is she now?"

"Probably still there. Transit cops will hold her til the marshals can pick her up."

"Thanks, Detective." He's half out of his seat already when he looks up at Reese. "We have to get to the train station."

At the train station, Finch comes back to the car's passenger seat, beside himself.

"We're too late. Jennings already picked her up."

John touches at his aching temple. They've succeeded at nothing.

"With his cover blown, he can't take her home through official channels." Harold's breath is tight and fast beside him. "He's going to make her disappear, Finch. We need to get to her."

Finch touches his glasses and has a thought. "I may have a way." He reaches for his laptop. "Government vehicles now have mobile hotspots for internet access like this one."

"That include marshal vehicles?"

"Yes. So I can get into their network. The trick will be figuring out which vehicle is Jennings'." 

There's one off by itself, heading north. John points. "That's him, west side highway." He's certain.

"He's taking her out of the city."

Reese sits back. 

"Get out."

"Excuse me?"

Reese turns to him with the violent, terrifying eyes he only uses on his victims and perhaps never before on Finch. Even when he attacked him in the hotel the second time they met, he wasn't this enraged.

"Leave the laptop now, Harold, and get out."

Finch does as he's told. What else can he do? Reese drives away from him, completely wild and uncontrollable.

Back in New Rochelle, Carter is chatting up Jessica's mom. There are so many pictures of Jessica around. 

"Your daughter was so beautiful."

"Oh, thank you." She can barely look at the pictures, all sunny and smiling behind her.

"Were you two close?"

She nods. "Very. We spoke most every day. So you said you had some questions about Peter?"

"Uh, yes, ma'am." Donnelly leans forward in the armchair. "Uh, prior to his disappearance, were you aware of your son-in-law's financial difficulties?"

"No. Peter had a good job. He was a good provider."

Donnelly tries to bring up the money issue, but mom is vague, something about a "rough patch" Jessica mentioned. Donnelly gets a call, leaving Joss to push on this "rough patch".

"Oh, no, Jessica and Peter had a good marriage." Carter's face hardens. Mom is deliberately obtuse, ignoring the torture her daughter went through. Then Donnelly's back.

"I just got a call that a guy in a suit assaulted four deputy marshals in their downtown field office."

"Wait, what?"

Joss's face falls, disappointed yet again with Reese and his violent tactics. When Donnelly is gone, she calls the only person who has any ability to help.

"Detective Carter," Harold answers on the first ring at his desk.

"What's this about an incident with four deputy marshals?"

"I've got it under control." 

"Are you sure? 'Cause it doesn't sound like it." 

Neither of them approve John's fist heavy solutions. Finch is trying to keep a tiger on a leash. But he tries to deflect her away.

"Yes, Detective. So, how is your New Rochelle investigation going?"

"I still don't understand John's connection to this. Are you sure there isn't anything you can tell me?"

"I'm sure you'll make sense of it, Detective."

Back with the mom, Carter is getting nowhere until...

"He was so much better than her... usual type."

Joss turns around. "She was seeing someone before Peter?"

"He was always away on duty, and then she'd be alone. That wasn't the life for her." But it was, and Jessica tried to make Reese understand that too.

Mom is all over the place with hating Jessica's "usual type" soldier guy and wishing she'd waited for him and maybe still be alive and happy

"Can I ask, do you have any pictures of this man?"

In Jessica's things, Carter finds a jewelry box. Beneath the drawer is what she's been looking for. She lets out a heavy breath. She was right.

There they are, somewhere tropical together, at a table with half drunk frozen margaritas. They're both smiling, their shoulders pressed together. Jessica looks bright and happy. Beside her, there is John, young and casual in his army uniform, his dark hair without a hint of gray combed neatly into a part. He is smiling in a more relaxed way than Carter has ever or will ever see him. This is before he was broken, and now she understands.

Her face is full of sadness for these lost souls and horror at what happened with them.

Back in the past, bearded, destroyed John sits watching old home videos of Jessica in her house. His mind takes him back to his life's greatest mistake, letting her go at the airport that day.

"Oh, yeah. I got engaged." It's a nice ring.

John is hurt by the revelation even as he knows it was inevitable. 

"His name's Peter."

And there Peter is in the video, wearing a tie. Is this their wedding? Engagement party?

"That's one of the things you learn over there. In the end, we're all alone, and no one is coming to save you."

Back at the airport, John pushes her away for the last time.

"Be happy with Peter."

He tries to just leave, but she won't let him.

"You don't believe that." He turns back. "Tell me to wait for you and... Say those words and I will."

Even on the video John is watching, Peter is threatening and controlling with her. His hand's on the back of her head, he's leaned in close. "Listen, it's a party, okay? Could you stop being so sensitive?" Then he and she realize the camera is on them and they're all artificial smiles and waves again.

John rewinds to the moment just as she sees the camera, when Peter is still gripping her and griping at her. She is looking right at the camera, and there is sadness and fear in her eyes. John's words repeat.

"In the end, we're all alone. And no one's coming to save you."

In the present, Carter is trying to dig up John's records by phone. "My eyes only."

Elsewhere, Reese is off his leash, chasing the husband down. It's night now, and he's driving.

"Mr. Reese?"

"What is it, Finch?" He's testy. He knows why Harold is calling. To stop him. 

"What exactly is your plan once you catch up to Deputy Jennings?" Finch is back at the library. There is fear in his voice.

"To get Sarah away from him."

"And Jennings?"

"Jennings had his chance. He didn't take it."

Finch closes his eyes for a split second, knowing John is slipping from his grasp back into the darkness. "I think, under the circumstances, it might be a good idea to bring the police in on this one."

"Finch, you hired me to take care of these things. You don't like how I do it, hire someone else." 

And he turns his com off. He's gone.

"Mr. Reese? John?" Harold tried to reach him as a person, but it's too late by then.

Jennings rolls up to a grimy motel and his inevitable fate.

In the library, Finch has his glasses off. He's rubbing his tired, worried eyes as he makes his call.

"Carter."

"Hello, Detective." There's such strain in his voice, but she's got her own major issues she's uncovered.

"This New Rochelle business... The car accident, the cover up, Jessica... You knew what I'd find, didn't you?"

"Knowing isn't always a blessing, Detective."

"True."

"But I confess, I was calling with a more urgent problem – John."

"Don't tell me you've lost him again."

Finch's voice shakes. "No, I know where he is, I just... can't reach him. Or stop him."

Jennings is hauling poor Sarah into the hotel room. He does the standard abuser routine. "I don't know how things got so out of hand with us." But she asks for the handcuffs off, and he snaps. Then it's the backside of the abuser routine after he hits her. "I know what you're thinking, that somehow I wanted this." He's repulsive and has his gun to her. 

But Reese is here on time this time and smashes the door in. Jennings tries to shoot him, but gets his face half caved in instead.

Sarah is pressed face first to the wall, crying, her hands still cuffed behind her. Reese approaches slowly, carefully, and unlocks her.

"Go," he says.

"Where?"

He closes her hand on a set of keys. "Anywhere you want. You're free."

Before she leaves, she looks at the man who tortured her, and the man who rescued her. 

"Thank you."

After the door is closed, her worthless husband calls her name from the floor.

"She's gone," Reese says. "It's over."

Creep laughs.

"Something funny?"

"You've never been in love, have you? Really, truly in love."

"Why?"

"Because then you'd know... it'll never be over."

"It is for you." And he pulls back to clock his lights out.

It's raining and Carter's driving to try to do what she can. She pulls him over and he rolls his window down. Reese is grim inside the car.

"Your friend told me I might find you up this way." A flicker of emotion. He does have friends, people who care for him, who are worried about him. But he has to do this. "I can't let you take him, John. This can't end like New Rochelle."

And now he knows she knows. There is so much pain in him.

"Do I need to look in the trunk?" she asks.

"You can do whatever you like. It isn't gonna change what I have to do."

She takes a breath. "Let me have him, John."

"If I do, he'll get away with it."

"I'll see that he doesn't."

For the first time, he turns to really look at her. "It won't be up to you. That's my point. There are things you can do, Detective, and things you can't. And that's where I come in."

"I can't allow you to just execute people."

"This isn't on you. It's on me. All I'm asking for is your trust."

"What? For you to do the right thing?"

"That I'll do what needs to be done." And he drives away, leaving Joss alone on the dark road. She sighs, and her breath comes in a wispy cloud in the cold. There is nothing she can do, nothing Harold can do. John is gone.

Back at Jessica's house in the past, John is half lidded, dreaming and dying watching the videos of her and the man who would kill her.

"Oh, yeah, Jess loves that. Don't ya, babe?" Peter even speaks for her in the video, giving her his own opinion.

The door slams. Peter is back home. This is the end of it, the end of him.

"Sullivan send you?" Stupid Peter thinks this is about money. It's about something so much more valuable than that. "Is this supposed to be some kind of uh... intimidation?" It's clearly working, but that isn't it. "I don't have his money."

"You don't have anything I want," John says in his most tired, empty voice. "Not anymore."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Good question. Haven't known the answer for a long time. I know who I was. I was the guy who left her behind. You know why? The real reason? Because I thought she deserved someone better than me. I thought she deserved someone who would look after her..." Here his voice almost breaks, he is so close to crying. "Be there for her." He turns his eyes to Peter. "I thought she deserved someone like you."

Peter swallows. Now he knows what is happening, and that he is no longer alone with the knowledge he killed his wife. John looks so small and crushed on the flowery upholstered chair.

"So I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"Who I'm supposed to be now." He holds the picture in his hands. Jessica smiling, frozen in time. "Now that she's gone." Tears are brimming in his reddened eyes. "See, when you find that one person who connects you to the world, you become someone different. Someone... better. When that person is taken from you... what do you become then?"

Peter takes a fire poker as a weapon, like that's going to help at all versus the violence machine before him. John bows his head. He knows who he is. He knows what he is. He takes a breath, stands, and walks with determination to do the only thing he knows how to do anymore.

In the present, Finch is waiting at the bench under the bridge. The trees are bare, it's cold. Reese comes up and sits down quietly. They talk to the river, not willing to make eye contact with one another, not yet. Finch does the most, checking him in the corner of his eye.

"I was beginning to wonder when I was going to hear from you again."

"I had some business to take care of out of town."

"I trust you now fully appreciate why I couldn't tell you about Sarah's case."

"I hope you now understand why you should have." Trust versus hope, a divide.

Now Finch does try to look at him, but Reese stays fixed on the flowing water. Only when he looks away does John turn his head, a reverse of their encounter in the beginning of this case.

"Did you know?" Finch once asked the same question in the same heartbreak. "Was she one of those numbers that came up again and again?" 

"What I know, Mr. Reese, is that New Rochelle happened before we started working together. And because of that, there was nothing either one of us could have done." So... yes. 

Neither of them knows what to say beyond that, so Finch breaks the ice with a business card.

"Forgot to include that in your birthday present. Must have slipped my mind." He walks away.

The card reads Harold Wren, Universal Heritage Insurance, his oldest identity that Reese knows. On the back, there is an address, handwritten. 810 Baxter St., Apt. 5A.

At the station, Carter gets John's record as requested. It's mostly empty, redacted and of little use. Still, what there is, she shreds so no one will ever find it. But she can't bring herself to shred the picture of John and Jessica. It warms her heart to see it, a moment in time when he was happy and open. This she keeps, safe with her.

She gets a call. It's a Mexican prison. Jennings is going to be there a long long time on faked drug charges. John didn't kill him after all. He asked her to trust him, and he kept her trust. And when she hears there are a few other Americans there, she knows he didn't kill Peter either. When he had a choice, he chose mercy.

John wanders into the building at the mysterious address to try his gift in the lock he finds. Inside is a beautiful modern flat, full of light, new furniture, huge windows, a view of the park where he plays Chinese chess below. Finch did know what he did with his time, and where. This gift surely must have cost a fortune. But it is exactly what he needed and what Finch wanted for him, a livable, human space to breathe and rest. It is perfect.

In the past, we're back at the hospital, where Reese is learning the worst news he will ever hear. He stumbles away again, clipping the man in the wheelchair.

"Sorry," the man says, and he turns around to reveal Finch in his healing time, sadness written all over him. He opens the folder on his lap to reveal pictures of John and Jessica and Peter, their numbers, and his knowledge of their fates. There is nothing he can do for them. It's already too late and he is powerless. "I'm so sorry."


	23. POI 1x22 - No Good Deed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which knowing the Machine exists endangers a number for the first time and Finch faces another death directly on his hands, while John discovers a heartbreaking amount more than he bargained for when he finally finds Harold's house.

### POI 1x22 - No Good Deed

#### Landmarks

  * John discovers Grace, Harold's sweet, gentle fiancé and lost love, her life preserved by great and painful sacrifice
  * Alicia Corwin sees Finch admit he built the Machine
  * In the past, Nathan creates the contingency, the system that gives him (and later them) the irrelevant numbers



#### Injuries

  * **John**
    * Knocked out in a fiery car crash after his vehicle is shot with an rpg, concussion #4 at least



* * *

We start in 2009, IFT. Nathan strolls into Harold's vast and now crowded server room to see him. The tall black stacks of processor upon processor whir and blink in green and white. Harold has his back turned to Nathan and us and his workstation with its customary array of monitors. Next to him is the map of New York, covered with black dots, people, numbers, data.

Nathan unbuttons his suit coat. "Thought you would have turned this thing off by now."

Harold's reaching up high to the top of one of the server stacks. This is his first library, indexing data. "We turn it over tomorrow. I'm keeping it online as long as possible."

Nathan looks down at Harold's six monitors, each filled with windows upon windows filled with command prompts and cam footage and nested folders.

"The world has been spinning for five billion years without your machine, Harold. I'm sure it will be fine for one more night."

Harold smiles at him and walks smoothly to his side. Nathan sighs. The weight of what they've done, what they're doing pulls him down constantly. He watches the endless parade of faces labeled NON RELEVANT flash past. Some of these people will kill. Many of them will die. No one will help them or stop them. Not this Machine, not them, no one.

"Honestly, I'll be glad to be rid of the thing."

But Harold is proud of the results already. "This _thing_ has already saved countless lives."

"You mean countless relevant lives." Good sweet Nathan. The Machine's fathers both valued humanity and life, and their daughter was raised to do so always as well.

Harold doesn't meet his eyes, just clicks something with his mouse. "We had to draw the line somewhere."

"Everyone is relevant to someone. You would know that if you had anybody in your life you cared about." 

It's a lash of a whip, an intensely cruel remark to make to someone's best friend, a person who has shared your life for years. But Nathan has always known Harold to be secretive and distant. His ability to calmly dismiss the irrelevant list chills Nathan, disturbs him enormously. How can he care so little for all of these lives?

Harold turns his head, something he soon will never be able to do again, appalled and angry at such a cruel remark from his closest friend denying him simple humanity, even as he works so hard to save all the lives he believes he realistically can.

Nathan knows it was too far to take his frustration and worry. He sighs. 

"I'm sorry," he says as Harold looks back at the monitors and folds his arms across himself. "What you've built here is incredible. And no one else will ever get a chance to tell you that." Harold bows his head. Nathan honors him and slights him. "And I _don't_ envy the decisions you've had to make." He looks at Harold, but Harold is completely rapt by the screens. "But I worry about you," That is enough to earn a glance up. "Seven years, you've been watching other people's lives, their plans, their relationships. Maybe it's time to invest a little time on your own."

Harold's brow scrunches up. He stamps his foot a little, frustrated. His arms are still folded tight.

"Who says I haven't?"

"I know you like your secrets, Harold, but if you had found someone... I would never hear the end of it."

They laugh, pretending everything is okay when absolutely nothing is. Harold grabs a paper off the desk and disappears back into the server stacks. The smile melts quickly off of Nathan's lips. He watches the screen with the Machine's processing, the images, the boxes.

We slide back into the present of 2012. Harold is limping across a crosswalk. Behind him, John is tailing. Oh, John. You haven't learned by now? You're not going to get what you want out of this.

Harold walks up to a newsstand, picks up a copy of a magazine called The Boroughs with a line illustration of Japanese koi on the cover. He goes to pay as John gets a call.

"Hello, Lionel." His standard condescending greeting.

But Fusco seems to be in a good mood anyway. "You ready to bust some dirty cops? Simmons wants me to meet the HR brass next week." He's so overjoyed by the idea of finally being free of this weight he's been bearing. He wants to be free. He wants to be clean.

"Then call me next week. I'm busy with research."

"Research?" Fusco knows instantly the stupidity he's trying and laughs. "You mean following your boss again." As he laughs, Carter walks by, suspicious at his malevolent smile. 

"You tailed him for weeks, you couldn't even find out where he lives."

"Yeah, well, unless you got an address, I'd say we're both striking out, huh?" 

Lionel hangs up and Carter eyes him across their desks. She has an open folder of all the dirty cops who are already missing or dead. Fusco notices her attention on him and eyes her back, so Carter breaks out the pleasant smile all women know how to give when they get a weird look from a man.

But this drama is secondary to John's out on the street. He squints, watching Finch walk away with his purchase. Harold's phone beeps and he stops to check it before embarking again. He hurries up to a payphone and picks it up, which gets John's attention immediately. _What would Finch need with a payphone?_ Harold listens to whatever he's hearing and looks around suspiciously. Then he hangs up, picks his magazine back up and heads away. He hits the com in his ear and John's phone rings a block behind him. 

"Finch?"

"We need to meet, Mr. Reese. We've just received another number."

_Oh, really?_ Now he's definitely gotten John's attention. When Finch is safely away, he approaches the phone, peers up and around, trying to see whatever it was Finch was looking at. He picks up the receiver for a second and immediately puts it back down, considering it useless. 

The Machine is listening to a phone conversation. What she is listening to is fallout from her other job, the one she was built to do.

"We never had this conversation, but I wanted to thank you personally for your work on the Dubai report. If you hadn't flagged Carlson–"

One Henry Peck replies. We see his employee picture. "Carlson, sir?"

"He was the key to the whole thing. You saved our asses, son."

"Thank you, sir."

Finch has that same picture the Machine had now pasted up to the cracked glass in the library.

"Henry Peck, 33 years old, never married, lives alone in Turtle Bay." Reese listens as he sips his coffee from a seat at the desk with a large open book in front of him. "Peck works as a chartered financial analyst, which is a fancy way of saying he picks stocks for a small financial firm, Decker North and Associates." The instant he's done with that sentence he turns around to face John and address the real elephant in the room. "Are you following me?"

John looks up from the book, pretends that's what they're talking about. "Financial analyst. It's riveting."

"Well, they can't all be babies and mafia dons. So far, the most unusual thing about Henry Peck is that he has better than average security habits. I haven't been able to hack his voicemail, his email, or any online accounts." His security must be a lot better than "better than average" if Finch can't even get into it.

John closes his book, sits back in the chair to consider. "Secretive, solitary... He's just like you, Finch." Harold's not too into that observation, but beyond the deep crease in his brow, he doesn't respond. "So how'd you get his number?"

"Well, John, there's this machine..." Finch says in the most sarcastic way possible.

John has a wry spark in his eye, a devilish smile. "Yeah, but you didn't get it here." Harold eyes him, anxious and uncomfortable with the direction this line of thought is going. "No..." John says, rising from the chair to approach him, to confront him with the only weapon that works on Finch – information. "It's much more subtle than that. And it's time I knew how the Machine communicates with you."

Finch eyes him, completely unsettled, and walks away from him, putting more distance between them. Distance is safety to Harold. "Why?"

"Well, not to be blunt, but wouldn't you want me to keep doing this if something ever happened to you?"

Finch has picked up the book John was reading and pours his concentration into it instead of looking at the man confronting him. It's a beautifully ornate copy of _Crime and Punishment_ , natch, red hardcover with a jacket, no fading, only a little jacket shelf wear at the front corners. A story of being trapped by one's past choices, haunted by them. He takes it and puts it away in the back of the room.

"If something ever happens, I have..." Harold considers how to describe this before he turns around to explain. "A contingency."

But John's still in sullen mode, sulking that Harold isn't telling him what he wants to know. "Well, sooner or later, you're gonna need to let the cat out of the bag, Finch."

"Curiosity kills cats, Mr. Reese."

Neither of them are happy, but there is work to do and lives to save.

Staking out Peck, John looks down on him in an office through his high powered lens. The man is rifling through papers at a desk.

"Well, Finch, so far the biggest threat to Peck is a paper cut. Any luck getting more info on him?"

Judging by his pursed lips and heavy stare at his monitors while his hands dance over his keys, the answer is no. 

"It's going to take more than luck. The firm's firewall is even better than Peck's." We see multiple windows opening IP addresses and generating passwords. But every one ends with red text: PORT CLOSED.

"Yeah, I've got line of sight on his office, but I can't get any signals from his wi-fi or cell."

"He works in the IQZ Telecom building. Financial firms like to co-locate with internet hubs so they can get their trades in a few picoseconds faster." It's insane, but that's literally how it works. And of course, Finch knows all about it. "If you're not getting a signal, it's probably just interference from IQZ's antennas."

Luckily for John, Peck is heading outside. Things get much easier in public. He leaves to follow.

John walks by him while Peck is busy texting and lightly brushes him. Immediately he's on his com. 

"Couldn't bluejack him, Finch, so I went old school... wireless bug."

"Alicia, it's Henry Peck... uh, again," he says on the phone. "Listen, I really need to talk to you, so please just give me a call and we'll find a place to meet, okay?"

John's all over that. " _Alicia_... So who's Alicia? An ex-girlfriend? Or someone he wishes was a girlfriend?"

Finch looks deeply concerned. He knows an Alicia who's also very deeply into security...

A woman walks up to Peck. "Mr. Peck! You forgot to wipe your phone."

That's another point that perks up John's ears. "He has to wipe his phone's memory?"

"It's become common practice for executives traveling overseas, but that's the first time I've heard of it here."

Peck smiles at the woman as they walk back. "Sorry, I guess I'm a little distracted today."

"Well, you work too hard," she says. They chit chat as they go inside. John knows whatever is happening is related to that mysterious building.

"I want to know what goes on in Peck's office, and since we can't get signals out, I'll have to charm my way in." Being beautiful, this has always been one of John's most trusted skills.

He walks in slickly through glass doors and tries to just stroll past the reception desk. Nothing doing, the woman is on him instantly and he has to look back and stop. "May I help you?"

Reluctantly, he steps back. His suit is often its own passport, allowing him free movement in all sorts of fancy places like this, but she's going to take more than that.

"Yes, um..." He saunters up to the desk, looks down on her with his sultry eyes and introduces himself with his satin voice. "John Rooney. Assets. I have a meeting with..." he pulls out his phone to pretend to check for a name as he waits for help from Finch, who readily pipes in with an answer.

"Thomas Brewster, CFA." 

"Tom Brewster." John goes for the more casual route, of course. Charm is rarely formal. He smiles again, lopsided and a little apologetic and all deliberately endearing. "I'm a tad early."

The receptionist is ice. She keeps her eyes on her monitor, checking his claim. Meanwhile, John watches Peck get back into his office. There's a security guard at the door, and Peck uses an electronic lock to enter.

And promptly, Finch chimes in again. "We just lost the feed from our bug."

John has an inkling of what's up, but he keeps his chill smile on anyway.

"I don't have any record of that meeting," the receptionist says, "and I'm afraid nobody's allowed back without an appointment."

He nods, casual, until his eyes catch her hand moving down beside her. He knows what that means. 

"Perhaps you should reschedule," she says. That is not at all what she means. She smiles too, like a viper. He gets the message.

"Perhaps I should." Discretion is the better part of valor, and John ducks out of the office to think of another approach with the knowledge he got from this unexpectedly dangerous encounter.

"I'm surprised, Mr. Reese," Finch says in the library. "That nice young lady seemed somehow impervious to your charms." 

"That nice young lady had a .45 pointed at me under her desk." Finch wasn't expecting that revelation. "There's a guard and a spin lock on the main door. This isn't a financial firm. It's a SCIF."

Now that Finch knows, if only from the text he instantly pulls up on his screen. "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Secret government installation designed to protect classified data."

"Peck's no financial analyst either. He's a NOC, some kind of spy."

"And you thought he didn't have a life." He might not for much longer if you two keep sniping at each other.

"So how do we spy on a spy?"

Finch has some ideas for that, as always. We see a coffeemaker being loaded onto a cart by a limping workman in a drab gray uniform.

"I believe I found a way in, Mr. Reese. The security in Peck's office blocks wireless signals, but what about good old fashioned wires?" 

The coffeemaker gets rolled into the building and the receptionist signs for it with a smile. Finch in his workman getup opens a big circuit breaker box somewhere. 

"And since every office runs on caffeine," he says as we see the woman carrying in the planted box through an ugly office of simple tables with crap office chairs and single monitors on each and suited spies toiling away with wires on the ceiling and the floor, "all we have to do his hide a camera and transceiver inside a shiny new coffeemaker." 

He places the antennaed transceiver in the breaker box and the receptionist places the coffeemaker by the sad selection of paper cups and a few stale looking pastries that is their break area. She plugs it into a power strip marked "BLACK CIRCUIT NO COMPUTERS". 

"...Wire it to send data out through the electrical system," which he does by plugging his latest gadget into a large port, "then wait for them to plug it in." And it's working instantly, showing the woman walking away from the bug she so willingly planted for them.

John listens to people talking in the office from a desk and computer setup inside a van.

"Let me play that for you again," says Peck.

"Got a signal, Finch."

He already knew. Finch walks away from a job well done, and tosses the uncomfortable workman's helmet away into the first dumpster he sees.

Peck is standing at a desk with two other men. They listen to some garbled talking on a recording. "That's the voice of Hassan Ben Amir," Peck says, pointing. "I listened to him every day when I was at Fort Meade." And now John's actively listening to him. "Hassan is a major player, funding terror throughout the Middle East, and if he's calling New York, we need to _pay attention_. Now, if you'll look at these intercepts..." 

Finch climbs into the van beside John, who's very entertained by all he's hearing and seeing. It's interesting to see them together in the field like this, not least for the contrast between them visually. John is still dressed in his black suit finest, white cuffs and collar gleaming, and Finch is still in his ugly workman's jumpsuit, unbuttoned at the neck to show the only white he's wearing, a dull looking t-shirt. Harold looks so different out of his shining armor. 

"Peck's an intelligence analyst," John says. Finch settles in behind him, close, and leans to put his chin on his fist to watch too, rapt. "And from the sound of it, a damn good one." John has respect for quality people in his profession.

"That's why they're in a telecom building, they can jack into the feeds." They're so cute sitting and working so closely together like this, both fascinated by what they're watching, side by side, inches apart. "It's an NSA listening station."

John is totally into this assignment now. "I guess we'd better listen."

Night falls, and John calls in. "All right, Finch, Peck just got home. Time to see what our spy does at night." From the looks of things through the lens, it's eat and read the paper. Exciting. "And so far... not much."

Finch is back in the library and back in his customary finery. "Not everyone is a social butterfly, Mr. Reese. For some of us, human interaction is... difficult."

"Not calling it human interaction might help." Changing the description to something softer doesn't make it any easier to deal with serious social anxiety. Finch sits back, stung by the pointless insult. "Works around the clock, no sign of friends or family... Poor guy doesn't seem to have much of a life." Who defines what a life is, John? You?

"Well, we can hardly fault him for that, seeing as everyone thinks we're dead." Thank you, Finch.

There's a knock at Peck's door. He puts down his chopsticks. "Mr. Peck? Are you there? Mr. Peck?"

He opens the door. "Mr. Chen?" There's police with another man.

"Your landlord called with a complaint," says the cop. "You mind if we, uh... have a look around, Mr. Peck?" He doesn't get to say one way or the other because they are instantly pushing past him to walk inside.

"What's this about?"

John takes another picture, documenting whatever is happening. "I was wondering the same thing."

"Well, apparently your smoke detector was malfunctioning today." That usually doesn't bring the cops, so... "When Mr. Chen entered the apartment to fix it... he saw these." The cop opens something on the desk to pull out a package. It's a plastic bag full of orange pills. "Adderall, felony weight."

"What? No, that's not mine."

"We're sure you'll get your chance to explain down at the station. Let's go." They start pulling him away. 

"Hold on. I'd rather have a chance to explain it right here." Yeah, that's not really how this works. 

Also, if the pills were in a box or something on the desk, how the hell did the landlord see them? I mean, obviously it's a setup, but that's a pretty pathetic cover.

"Well, Finch, I think Peck's life just got a little more interesting." John is taking more pictures when his com screams with feedback. "Finch?"

"Feedback from the bug. Something else must be on the channel. Trying to clean it..." Audio noise appears visually in two graphs on his RF analyzer window. That's not good. He sits back, blanching a bit at what he's found. "It's the same signal. There's another bug. Someone else is listening."

And John looks down in time to see a sketchy looking guy coming out of the shadows down on the street. There's our someone else. "Yeah, and I think I've got eyes on him."

On the street level, John advances past garbage and metal scaffolding. He's catching up quickly with the guy, but the guy knows he's there over his shoulder. He dashes out to round a slow moving oncoming truck and vanish. John steps forward, but there's no indication of where the man went.

"I think those drugs were planted, Finch. I think Peck's being set up. Question is, why?"

Next day at the library, John is by himself. A street cam is on one of Finch's monitors and a more standard set of text and terminal windows is on another. He walks over to one of the cabinets. On top are 12 different copies of the same magazine, the same issue that John saw Finch buying the other day at the newsstand. Why? There has to be a reason, Finch doesn't do anything for nothing. But it's opaque to John.

"You ever buy 20 copies of the same magazine, Carter?" he says to the air and his preferred detective partner.

She's in the station, walking with a file in her hand. "What?"

"Never mind. Do you have news?" he says as he turns Finch's chair to sit.

"Peck made bail about an hour ago. I got everything I could on Henry Peck, which isn't much." As she talks, he digs through Finch's things, even the garbage, where he finds an empty tea cup marked in sharpie as SENCHA GREEN. He turns it to look at the bottom. "Only one charge on his record, and Peck had that expunged." There's a code on the bottom of the cup, a batch number. John jots it down.

"Does he have a history of drug abuse?" The cup info gets written on a post-it. Kramer Paper Co. Lot #JGS-0311.

"Not even close. It was a speeding ticket."

That strikes John. "He fought to get a speeding ticket off his record?"

"It was the principle of the thing, at least that's what Peck said in his meticulous, 78-page brief he sent the judge."

"Wow." That's dedication. He tosses the cup into the trash and puts his feet up on the desk. "Gotta love a man who doesn't know when to quit." Yes, and that's all of you, really. "Thanks, Carter."

"Yep." She snaps her phone shut. She's still not entirely enthused about this situation.

"Well, Peck's no addict. Somebody planted those drugs," Finch says as he arrives, walking quickly, carefully carrying another identical cup of sencha green. "I visited the bodega that's down the street from Peck's office..." He pauses to put down his tea and lean his entire upper torso to the side since he can't use just his head to silently tell John to drop his feet off the desk and get the hell out of his chair. "...and chatted up their wireless network, downloading..." he sits and reaches for the keyboard to show his discovery, "this video of someone breaking into his apartment."

Security cam footage comes up. It's a street scene of Peck's apartment front. A man enters.

"I'm pretty sure that's the same guy I saw last night. Whoever he is, he's well trained."

"Someone's targeting Peck," Harold says as he stands with a freshly printed blurry picture of the man entering the building to add to the glass. "We need to figure out why."

"And until we figure out who's after him, I'll keep an eye on Peck." John straightens his jacket and goes to work.

Later, things aren't going well for Peck at work. He's at his desk when another man walks up. 

"Henry, we need to talk. We know about the arrest. And drug problem."

Peck's computer is stacks of windows, all black text and white letters. Five handwritten yellow post-its line the top, obscuring a few inches of screen.

"There is no drug problem," Peck says, turning around.

"Under executive order 13526, your security clearance is suspended pending investigation." Peck is horrified and dumbfounded, John much less so out in the surveillance van. "You're hereby placed on administrative leave, effective immediately."

"Please, sir, you can't just–"

"I need you out, Henry," says his balding bearded boss. "As of this moment, you can't work for the NSA." The man is not leaving until Peck is gone. Henry stands, feeling wronged.

"In the seven years I've worked here, the strongest drug I've taken is aspirin. There's something else going on here. I'm being set up."

Boss is having none of it, shaking his head, his hands low in his pockets. "If you're alleging some greater conspiracy here, I can add that to your file. But it might make you seem... unstable."

Peck blinks, his mouth agape. He's trapped without recourse and he knows it. What can he do but gather his things into his messenger bag and leave?

John's seen this whole routine before. "Question authority and they call you crazy. Peck's being forced out."

"I don't know about you, Mr. Reese, but I'd very much like to know why." 

John looks incredibly angry for Peck. He knows what it feels like to be manipulated while working for the government.

Peck's on the phone outside. "I'm sorry to keep calling, but it's really important. Please, I just need to speak to Ted Gibbons. My– Hello?" But they've already hung up.

"Recognize that name, Finch?"

He's already got it up on his screen. "Theodore Gibbons, Deputy Director of the NSA."

John's out on the street too, following Peck across the street and a few steps back under yet more metal scaffolding. "He's going over his boss' head, way over. Whatever Peck's into, it's big."

"Out of the country? Really? Because some guy at headquarters just told me he was in a meeting. Please. Now all I did was ask questions any decent analyst would– Hello?" He can barely make it through a few sentences on these calls. He stops on the street, unable to believe this is happening. "Hello?" he says again to the dead line.

"Someone is destroying Peck's life for asking questions," Finch says. This cuts close for both of them. "About what?"

Peck heads home into his building.

"Finch, the security camera over Peck's door, was it working last night?" Because John can see the wires dangling from it now, sliced clean.

"Yes, why?"

"Because someone's in his apartment." Oh no. John steps forward to cross the street toward nothing good, he knows.

Walking into his place, Peck's eyes are still latched onto his phone in his hand, so he doesn't notice the pills scattered over every horizontal surface in the room until he steps on some of them with a crunch. 

"What the hell?" The scene becomes clearer when he looks up and sees a nearly empty bottle of straight bourbon on the table surrounded by yet more pills. He's walked into the scene of his set death, already in progress.

And yep, the guy from last night jumps out from behind and grabs Peck, but John steps in just in that second, gun drawn. The man tries to throw Peck at him, but John's too fast for that and ducks by to plow the man in the face. He falls back and uses the break to bring out his own gun at arm's length, but by that second, John's already on him and grappling, tackling him backward further into the apartment. At the door, Peck sees all this and decides his safest bet is to be literally anywhere else.

Hearing guttural grunting, Finch stands in the library. "Mr. Reese, is everything all–" At the sound of glass crashing which we see to be John and the man tumbling together into a coffee table, Finch answers his own question. "I'll take that as a no." He hurries away.

Meanwhile, John's encounter with his blonde opponent continues. They're circling each other, fists up. The guy's good. He gets a punch into John's face, more than most get. John returns, and while the man is talented enough at fighting to deflect many of his shots, John still gets in a good shot to the face himself. He goes to use his customary heel kick to the gut, but the man loops around behind him, grabbing him in a headlock. John's face reddens and he groans but he's got enough power left in him to elbow the man severely several times in the ribs and he relinquishes his grip. John's on the back foot now. The man gets a body blow in and spins John around to toss him into a big hardwood cabinet, breaking the door glass all around him. He collapses to the floor to writhe for a moment and the man takes the free second to jump over an ottoman and run.

Groaning, John lifts himself out of the puddle of shattered glass onto his hands and knees. A breath later and he's on his feet, running after his assailant. He makes it outside in time to watch a black Chevy SUV speeding away. The man is gone, as is Peck.

"Finch, I know a government trained assassin when I see one. They're not just after Peck's job. Someone in Washington wants him dead."

"Then we need to protect him, Mr. Reese. He can't have gotten far. I'll use the bug to track him down."

Somewhere, Finch hops out of his sedan. He's got his phone out. It's working as an RF scanner at 2.4 GHz. BUG DETECTED it says in red text. Harold looks around for his man and finds him crossing a street, still buried in his own phone, desperate for help or any explanation of what the hell is happening to him. He punches a number and a woman answers.

"Hi, Ted Gibbons, please," Peck says to the woman on the line.

A man comes on. "Hello?" As this happens, Finch hurriedly puts his own phone up to his ear to listen in.

"Deputy Director Gibbons, my name is Henry Peck. I work for you."

"This is my daughter's cell phone. How did you get this number?" This is a dangerous escalation of desperation by Peck.

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but someone just tried to kill me."

"What?" 

Finch keeps listening and walks forward, trying to keep up with Peck. His phone case is as fancy as he is, with a leather accent.

"Three weeks ago, you called me off the record to congratulate me on a report that I submitted that led to a high-level arrest of a man named Carlson, but I never heard of a Carlson."

"His name was in _your_ report."

"But I didn't put it there. Someone slipped his name into my report and that one name was the key to stopping a major terrorist attack."

Finch's phone in his hand drops away from his ear. Oh, god. He knows. There is only one thing that this can be, one thing that does that, that pulls unknown people's names out from nowhere to stop violent disaster. There's only the one thing. _His_ thing. Oh, god.

Limping along the street, he looks nauseous, sick to his stomach. This man Peck was smart and clever and he will die by the same people who killed Nathan, who would kill Harold if they ever learned he existed. But he has to keep listening. If he's going to save this innocent man, he has to keep going. Slowly, shakily, he lifts the phone back to his ear.

"All I did was ask questions," Henry says, desperate and in more danger with every word. "I have been arrested, I have lost my job, and they're trying to execute me and I just want to know why." He looks around constantly, checking his back, watching faces. He's shaking himself holding up the phone.

"Don't ever call me again," is all the man says on the other end of the line. He hangs up and it's done. Henry knows he is being burned and he has no one to turn to. He stares down at the phone in disbelief. He's afraid for his life, knowing anyone around him could be trying to kill him.

Across the street, Finch drops the phone on his end and stops in place. He's stunned, and so afraid for this man. For himself. For the Machine. John knows something is wrong as soon as he walks up from behind. 

"Everything okay, Finch?"

Finch doesn't turn around. He just watches Henry walk away into his and all their unknown.

"I know who wants Peck dead and I know why. I know what he's been asking questions about. They want him dead because of me." 

He's horrified by it. He'd resigned himself to all of the death that came from the relevant list, but he'd thought at least no one else would have to die for simply knowing about the Machine anymore. He was wrong. It's still happening. He and his creation are going to kill another innocent person simply for the sin of being good at his job.

Harold turns his torso to look at John, but only for a moment before compulsively bringing his eyes back to the man he is about to get murdered. "Henry Peck doesn't know it..." He turns back, "...but he's been asking about _The Machine_."

John's face doesn't move. He knows that this is not Finch's fault, this is the fault of the same monstrous government that destroyed his life too. He is determined that it will not happen to this man, their number. That reasoning and intensity hasn't changed. 

We slip back to 2009. Alicia Corwin is walking into a restaurant to see Nathan. We catch him on the side of the screen but the middle of the room, his back turned to us. Alicia is already nervous. She doesn't trust the man across the table.

Nathan has his trademark smile for her. He's nursing a scotch, and this isn't his first glass. Alicia sits down and Nathan, knowing very well how to schmooze, holds his finger up to get the waitress for a drink for Alicia, but that's the last thing she wants right now.

He tilts his head at her as she shifts uncomfortably in her chair and clears her throat. "Something wrong, Alicia?" He's leaned back in his chair, as casual as ever.

"You mean other than being involved in an ongoing conspiracy to spy on millions of Americans?" She shrugs.

"Yes," Nathan says, raising his glass. "But it's all for a good cause."

She nods. She's starting to realize that that good cause isn't necessarily so good. 

He takes a good drink and sets his glass down, locked with her eyes. Nathan favors eye contact. It's how he reads people. They tell him what they want and he sees if he can give it to them. Alicia wants reassurance. That, he can give her. 

He takes a folded paper out of his inside pocket. 

"Day after tomorrow, freight train out of Des Moines. The last six cars, the manifest will list the contents as decommissioned computer parts." Decommissioned for a few days anyway. Alicia takes a look at the paper. It's exactly as he said.

Again, she just nods. She's so afraid. She doesn't trust Nathan, she doesn't trust the people she works for. Every second now she feels the ice cracking beneath her feet.

"What about things on your end?" Nathan's voice lilts slightly. He's not asking about just the setup for the Machine.

This is business, she can focus on details and be a little less afraid at least. "The facility is designed to the specifications you gave us, and it's discreet, where we're putting it." She shakes her head. "No one's gonna go looking."

He hasn't looked away from her, squinting with the intensity of his intelligent eyes. He knows women. He knows people. Something is wrong.

"Any other problem?"

"Dissemination. We have a protocol in place. If the machine identifies a suspect, the name will find its way to the right people... with no way to trace the intel back to the source."

"There can't be. Otherwise..." He lifts his hand. "We'll all wind up someplace where no one's going to go looking." He feels safer that they're all in this together. He takes his glass again. "Eight people in the world know it exists." He takes a drink. "We need to keep it that way."

Alicia starts, looks at him.

" _Seven_ , Nathan." Nathan turns his glass. Shit. His mouth is going to get them in trouble. "Seven people, unless _you told someone_."

He does what he's best at, disarming people and talking them his way. He chuckles, turning the glass on the table. "Come on, Alicia, you know I'm terrible at math." She doesn't look terribly soothed by that, so he plays another card, reversal. "The people on your end..." He folds his hands on his knee. "You sure about them?"

She takes a breath, moves her eyes away from his. "Making sure that no one ever finds out about the machine is our problem." Another shaky inhale. "We'll take care of it." 

Nathan sits back a little. That's doubt from her. And fear. And menace. He's back to turning his glass on the table. 

"We've known each other a long time, Alicia." His voice drops lower, harder than his usual satin. "Something's got you rattled."

She smiles and shrugs dismissively, the way women do when they just want a man to move on. He's not wrong about this, she just doesn't want to tell him.

"I'm fine, Nathan. I'll be happier when this is all settled and I can go back to my day job." Poor Alicia still believes there's hope for normal lives for them after this. The Machine is a singularity. Everyone who touches it is changed.

"And what's that, exactly?" They've known each other for years, but they've never trusted each other.

"Classified." She smiles though, and Nathan smiles back. They'll leave this topic but at least on friendly terms. She takes another long breath, looks over at him. "You can buy me that drink now."

Nathan smiles, shifts in his chair happily. Finally, back to his specialty, chatting up people over drinks. And this at least falls in his favorite subcategory, chatting up beautiful and intelligent women over drinks.

In the present, Finch and Reese are walking into the park. Harold still looks seasick, pale, sad, and scared. John keeps his pace with Harold's limping, lets him set the speed and keeps close but a half step behind. He gets a call.

"Yeah, Carter?"

She's on the flip phone, testy, walking to her desk. She has to talk low because she's at the station. "One of Peck's neighbors called 911. Said they saw two men fighting in his apartment, is everything _okay_?" She's both worried about him and furious with him, her usual mix with this insane man.

But it's not that insane man who answers her. It's his insane boss.

"The situation has been resolved," Finch says, talking fast. "We're fine now, Detective. Thank you," he says in a faux-casual half sing-song.

She starts on hearing his voice. What the hell is he doing on the line? Oh, that's right, he's just always listening. When he summarily hangs up on her after three sentences, though, she looks down at her phone, still surprised and a bit concerned. She snaps the phone closed. 

That's never happened before, Finch coming on the line in the middle of call with John. He was intervening, actively pushing her away from this case. Finch wouldn't do that unless something was really wrong and probably extremely dangerous. 

"Doesn't sound resolved to me," she says to herself. 

Meanwhile, Peck's living his solitary nightmare out on the sidewalks of New York in his trench coat and tie. He looks harried and stressed, suspicious of everyone except the two men actually following him half a block away.

As they're rounding a corner of black metal fence around a small green space, John reaches out and stops Finch just ahead of him, guiding him to the corner. They're too close anyway and need some cover and John has some _questions_. He leans on the fence. Finch just stares forward at their number, this poor man.

"So Peck asks about your Machine, and now someone's trying to kill him. Something you want to tell me, Finch?"

Finch talks tech, bows a bit introducing it. "As with all computer systems, the big problem is human error." That is definitely the truth, as mercenary as that truth seems. "Strictly speaking, the Machine is not legal. I always knew that certain measures would be taken to protect it, but..." 

Peck turns around and so they have to too, averting their faces. He's looking for something or someone, waiting, nervous. Finch finishes his thought when they turn back around.

"But as I found out myself, the people I've entrusted it to are more... _ruthless_ than I anticipated." 

Finch was always too kind, too gentle to anticipate it. Nathan knew better. He understood the darkness in people better, having more of it himself. But that lack of skepticism led to so much destruction, so much death.

John knows about trusting people who turn out to be more ruthless than anticipated. Here, it's many of the same people. And now they're after Henry.

Peck's phone rings. "Hello?"

"Is this Peck?" says the hard woman's voice on the phone.

Henry knows her. "Alicia Corwin?"

John and Finch both react to that. Finch turns up his com to listen.

"Corwin. She's the Alicia he's trying to meet?" John knows her too and not from Finch. Harold looks down, steeling himself. "She worked for the National Security Council."

"Miss Corwin, are you there?" Peck says, scared but needing answers. 

We see Alicia, a shadow of her previous self, curled around a pay phone receiver. Years of fear have taken a great toll on her. She peers up and around with prey animal eyes.

"You've been looking for me?"

"Can we meet?"

That terrifies her. She stands straighter, clenches the phone. "No."

Peck shifts his weight. He wanted to do this in person, but this will have to do. He starts his story. "Two months ago, a report I wrote was changed when it went through your office, but your office has been shut down for more than a year." She looks around, looks trapped. He begs her. "Please, I just want to know what's going on. I just want my life back."

Alicia knows better than anyone that there is no going back. She closes her eyes, sad for this poor soul, sad and terrified as always for herself, for what she's done, for what she helped make happen. She gives him what he wants.

"Sibilance."

"Okay," he says, understanding a little from that single code word. "Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"Run." It's all she's been doing for years.

Peck goes to walk through the park and John immediately moves forward to follow him. Finch tails behind. They're side by side coming around another fenced corner.

Finch's voice is determined, but firm in that way that is clearly false. He's trying to keep himself controlled, but it is a struggle.

"We need to stop him, Mr. Reese, from learning more about the Machine, about _Sibilance_ , whatever that is..." He's starting to realize the scope of what they're dealing with. "We need to treat this like an _outbreak_. Peck is _infected_ , with an idea, but infected all the same." He's stopped John entirely now, turned to him, deadly serious. There's deepening worry in the deepening crease in his brow. Now he's the one staring forward at their target.

Finch continues, talking fast in the way he does when he's afraid. "Anybody he talks to can wind up dead. And everything that Peck uncovers makes it that much more _impossible_ for us to save his life."

John offers the simplest solution. "So let's just get him to a safe house." 

"It's not that simple." Finch is animated, cornered by this understanding. "He'll want to know who _we are_ , and knowing that would put him closer to finding out about the Machine." There's screeching interference over John's com. Someone else is listening again. It's hard to hear Finch over the sound. "Whatever we do to _save_ Peck, it must be without him knowing that we exist." He steps forward, following the screech. Now Finch's voice is twisted both in his ear and beside him. "Mr. Reese, are you even listening?"

John brings up the device from the trash can nearby. There's a cell phone without a back, and a small chip. He holds it up as he stands, furious with the both of them and this whole situation. 

"Well, now we have a bigger problem. Peck found the bug and he just gave us the slip." John throws the now worthless chip back in the trash with force and frustration. Behind him, Finch is looking around a little for him, but John knows Peck is a good spy. They won't find him here anymore.

Night falls on the library. John's sitting at the desk, leaned on the hardwood with an elbow. He's watching the screens trying to track digitally the man they lost physically. His fingers rub against his thumb, as if he was reliving the grip they'd lost.

"Peck's cashed out his bank accounts. His credit cards are popping up at cheap hotels and liquor stores all over the city." John recognizes the trick. "He's probably handing them out to the homeless." It's what he would do. He purses his lips. "The NSA certainly taught him how to scatter a digital footprint." He raises his voice to Harold elsewhere. "Finch, are you getting anything off Peck's phone?"

Finch answers off-screen. "Unfortunately, they taught him how to brick a cell phone as well." He walks over to hold up the worthless phone and drop it unceremoniously onto the desk with a frown. "Flash memory is unrecoverable," he says with disappointment. He's given John what he knows of the situation, it's time for reciprocity. "What can you tell us about the people hunting him?" His voice is softer. This is life and death. Who are the murderers who will kill this man for knowledge? 

"An elite squad," John says as he rises to stare at the pictures on the glass again. "Probably a three-man team." He looks at the blurry photo from outside Peck's apartment. "The guy I fought had a handgun chambered for rifle ammunition so it shreds kevlar." He turns to face Finch who is grim behind him with his arms knotted across himself. "Only one unit I know gave those as standard issue... Intelligence Support Activity. An obscure army unit that does black ops so dark, technically they don't exist."

Finch looks down, aghast but not at all surprised to finally learn the name of the group that killed Nathan. "Guess we better find Peck first."

"They'll hunt him like I would," John says. "Start with his needs... sleep, a place to hide... and a way to get information." That's at least a step forward, somewhere to keep trying. He walks back toward Finch at the desk now who easily followed his chain of logic and is already in the midst of the search.

"Cash-only hotels with internet access." He gets to typing.

Two men are in a van in the dark. The driver's on the phone. "There's been a complication," he says. "Target's still in play."

"That's not a complication," the balding man on the other end of the line says. We can only see the side of his head and his hand but we can see what he's looking at: a picture window with a city nightscape twinkling in it, blurry. "That's failure." The camera moves and we see the blur in the window take recognizable shapes. The Capitol Building, the Washington Monument. This is the ISA.

"He has assistance."

"Who?"

"Unknown. One of ours, I think. Or at least he used to be." Say what you will about these government men, they're good at their jobs. This one read John instantly. "We've lost the element of surprise and the ability to make it look like an accident. What's the mandate?"

Finally we see our boss man, some fat white guy in an overly expensive suit in an overly expensive leather chair in an overly expensive office. A globe sits nearby, a gift probably. It's for show. 

"Take the gloves off," he says. "Get it done."

At the library, Finch is done with his search. "I've got a hit, Mr. Reese, a youth hostel in Hell's Kitchen." His hands are trembling as they work across the keys. "I can't be certain he's still there, but Peck definitely used their computer. He wasn't able to dig up anything on Sibilance..." He's still working, still reading. "But he had good luck finding a pinout to hack the card reader in his office. I believe Mr. Peck is planning to break into the NSA."

The office is dark. A brown shirted security guard walks past leather waiting room couches and flowers at reception. As soon as he passes by the front doors, Peck peeks out from another door beyond them. He unscrews the case of the door keypad and it falls open forward. Some wire and a few paperclips shorts the system exactly as he needed. The doors click and he's inside. 

Finch sees all of this from the coffeemaker cam still in operation. Peck walks across the room, back to his old desk. "He's in," Harold says, worrying his lip with his index finger. This is the part he can only watch. And hope.

"So am I," John says, silky. 

Harold is audibly stressed and it expresses in formality, a form of control. "Then I would very much appreciate it if you would stop Peck from getting any more information that'll get him _killed_." Poor sweet Finch. He's so scared, but not for himself.

They're both watching Peck rifle through papers, reading. A screen in front of him is already displaying a document about Sibilance. 

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I take those reports, he's gonna know I exist." 

"I recognize this is a challenging situation. But you _have_ to avoid direct contact."

And maybe John would have followed that instruction, but suddenly he sees the red dot of a laser sight lining up on Henry's back.

"Peck!" he shouts and he runs forward toward him. If they just kill him here and now it won't matter one bit what he knows. Peck is totally oblivious when John flies in from nowhere to his side and tackles him to the floor. Shots fire into the computer hardware of the room, golden electrical sparks fly about everywhere. The three man team John expected are in the room with them. They have automatic weapons and pour bullets into every surface.

John drags startled Peck to his feet and presses himself to a wall for cover. He's drastically under powered here for weapons, but he knows he is an incredible shot. They're taking a million, he will only need a handful. 

One agent signals another to move around, trying to flank John and Peck. Over the com, Finch does what he can.

"You're right, Mr. Reese. It's a three man team."

A line of bullets breaks the other side of the wall John's against, but then he leans out and puts a shot right in the first man's femur.

"Two and a half," he updates.

Peck has taken off himself, running with papers in hand, desperate to get out with his life and what he came for. This is the second time this strange other spy has saved him, but he doesn't trust anyone now.

John does what he can to give him cover and shoots at his nearest pursuer. He leans down and takes one of their guns. Sparks fly everywhere as he lays down fire to clear their path out.

Outside, Peck is yelling, holding his papers. "Hey!" he yells, trying to get the attention of a cop car coming by. He isn't sure if it will stop, so he grabs a half empty bottle of booze from the trash can nearby and throws it into the side of the car. It shatters, and brown liquid spills across the white paint. The sirens fire. He's got their attention.

He runs up to the door to the cop, in his face before he's stepped out of the car. "Hey, I just broke into that building, okay? You gonna arrest me?"

He sure is. "What the hell's the matter with you?" the beat cop says and tosses him down across the hood to cuff him, exactly as Peck hoped. He looks back at the building. Four men are having a shootout in there. Will any of them be alive? At least he is, for the time being.

Another cop takes his papers from him. "Hey, don't lose those, that's evidence!" he says. "You're gonna want that when I confess."

"Relax, pal. As soon as I read you your rights, you can tell us everything."

John steps out of the building in time to see Peck getting loaded into the car. He disappears his gun to keep it out of sight. Peck looks back at him with the cops arm around him, unsure if this man is trying to kill him or help him. If it's help, he doesn't have the slightest idea why.

John looks worried as they stuff his head down into the back seat. This is out of his hands now. It's a lot harder to control. The car pulls away. He taps his com.

"Finch?" he says, still breathing a bit hard from the fight. "You're not going to like this."

It's 2009 again, and it's the IFT Plaza. Harold is in a standard dark suit unlike his colorful bespoke style he'll wear in his afterlife. He almost looks like he's dressed for a funeral. He is strolling around his server room, saying goodbye to his creation. His daughter is about to leave the nest, go fly on her own. 

He touches the pieces that were his home, his whole world for years. Tomorrow all of this will be gone. His life's work will be finished and out of his hands. Nathan walks up behind him, sees him in this ritual. He's nervous too.

"Everything's in place. Point to point transit will take ten days."

"Hope nothing goes wrong in the rest of the world in ten days."

They're both looking at the screen, plain black with white Courier text.

Initiate Cluster  
Restart Node  
Admin Access (highlighted)  
Delivery Mode  
Initiate Total System Shutdown

Finch takes a breath, his finger hovering above the enter key. This next step is everything.

"Wait," Nathan says. "Do we have a contingency?" After his meeting with Alicia, he's getting a bad feeling about this. They've built a shield but they've also built a sword. It's beyond dangerous.

"A contingency?" Harold turns his head to look up at him, incredulous. The idea seems ridiculous to him.

"Alicia seemed... nervous." His voice is down to a whisper. It's unnecessary, no one is listening. No one but _her_ , of course. "What do we do if the government decides to abuse this thing?" This is a conversation you should have had years ago, guys. 

Harold blinks. He can't believe he's bringing this up now, just as he's completed this astonishing achievement. This was his end, his part of the bargain. 

"These are your contacts, Nathan."

"They're just people," he says. Harold's Machine might be flawless, but human beings are definitely not. Nathan's hair is loose by his temple. He's at loose ends too. "The power that this thing represents–" He holds his hand open to Harold. "I mean, who would you trust it with?" 

"Besides you? No one." He turns to him, serious. Harold knows Nathan is flawed but always good at heart. Everyone else? They're uncontrolled variables. "Which is why the Machine has been coded in such a way that it cannot _be_ abused. It cannot even be accessed." Harold is so proud of his creation, the security and effectiveness he gave it. Nathan loves him, trusts him, but this is much more dangerous than he can get Harold to understand. He's listening, but his lips stay in a tight line. 

Harold continues. "It upgrades itself, maintains itself, patches itself." Because it needed to be so autonomous is another reason he needed to give it full intelligence and sentience. He needed it to know how to help itself and protect itself so it could help and protect so many others. "After tonight, no one can alter it. Ever."

"I used to be a software engineer, Harold. Remember, back before I became your corporate beard?" There's bitterness there. Harold got the act of ultimate creation. Nathan got dealing with spooks and schmoozing financiers and other assorted assholes. "Any system can be compromised, given enough time."

Harold can't exactly argue with that. He's not wrong. It might be centuries, millennia he's talking about here, but that's only by current processing power. In the future... He's not wrong.

"We need an off switch," Nathan says, grimacing slightly. "A back door, and this is our last chance to build one." He nods down at their shared doom.

Harold looks at him hard. "You were a talented engineer, Nathan. So you should remember... any exploit is a total exploit. The tiniest crack becomes a flood. If we build a back door into this Machine, and someone else finds out about it," he pauses, thinking of the terror of that possibility, that inevitability if they did what Nathan wanted. "That would be..." his voice breaks. It's utterly terrifying to even contemplate. "Very bad." You know things are truly severe when he understates them this much.

Harold shifts on his feet in front of Nathan, stepping closer to him, so close. "We need to trust the Machine, exactly as we built it, and then let it go." Their daughter can and needs to take care of herself.

He clicks the down key until _Total Shutdown_ is highlighted. They're both scared, but this is the end of the path they both decided to go down all those years before. Whatever comes next is something different entirely. He takes a breath and presses the button. The cursor blinks, and the servers around them all power down. All the twinkling lights are gone, all the hum of fans disappears. The Machine herself fades out watching her fathers standing still, weighed down by their decision. This is the beginning of her future too. 

Now the humans are by themselves in the room. Nathan looks around, not knowing what to do, what to say. Harold just nods his head, again and again. _It's done, it's done, it's done._ He'd worked so hard, devoted himself body and soul to this incredible thing he made, and now it's out of his hands forever. It ends all at once, his greatest achievement, his greatest love. He loved the Machine he made. And he'll never see her again. He takes his bag and goes to walk away in silence.

Nathan lets out a hard breath. Harold stops before he disappears, looks back at his dear friend and smiles. They did what they set out to do. This incredible, historic collaboration is done. Harold walks away and Nathan is left alone.

Back in 2012, Peck's been arrested. They're talking about him over the police radio and the Machine is listening in. "We've got a BOLO on that guy. Take him to Detective Carter at the Eighth."

In the interrogation room, Peck is begging someone across the table to understand. The only one who really understands is the Machine, watching him from a cam above.

"Please, just listen, they've taken my job, ruined my life." He's animated, pointing with his cuffed together hands at the papers in front of him. "Now I know why. This is the proof. These are six reports I wrote for the NSA, and six covert actions based on those reports. In each case, a single name gets added to what I wrote, and each time, that name turns out to be the key to stopping a major terrorist attack. Six for six." He knows what that means. "The _only_ way to be that accurate is with illegal surveillance on a _massive_ scale. Then there's this..."

As he goes to bring out his next exhibit to his unseen judge, we see Finch is listening, tracking with his computer audio recorder. Behind that window is another, something about unlock codes and mapping cellular towers.

" _Sibilance_ is an internal audit of the NSA intranet." 

Finch is beside himself listening to this, seeing how his Machine is used from the other side, doing what it was meant to do. This man has peeled all the layers of the onion away and he might as well be peeling away Harold's skin. He presses his hands flat together by his face. This is an unmitigated disaster and it is all his doing. He sits back, unable to turn this off, forced to listen to this man digging his own grave.

"It's totally routine," Peck continues, "until they find signals hidden just beyond the Shannon limit. It should just be static, but there was data." Finch is pale and grim in the shadows of the library. He knows exactly what Peck is talking about. He's talking about her. "Someone is sneaking just as much data out as the NSA is taking in. To scan through all that, you need an organization _ten times_ our size. It's more than any human–" And he looks up at the cam. He knows. 

Peck is quiet, his eyes lost for a moment. What this means, it's almost too much to fathom. "Oh my god, they actually built it," he whispers. He winces, but decides to explain.

"After 9/11, the government wanted a computer system – a machine – that could watch everyone and everything, catch terrorists before they strike." Ramin Djwadi's theme for Finch and the Machine just dimly comes in, it's a nice touch. "They tried with Trailblazer, TIA, Stellar Wind. They– they all failed. But if I'm right, then someone really built the damn thing, and it's _watching us_ right now." He points up to the camera with his still bound hands.

In the library, Finch is crushed. His pale blue eyes settle off into the distance. _Someone_ is him. He built the damn thing. Everything that has come from it, everyone who has been destroyed by it, all of it started with him.

Across the table, listening to this entire diatribe, it's not Carter but Fusco. He looks around, looks up at the camera, looks back at the disheveled guy across from him. 

"Okay, you want a soda or something?" HAHAHA, I love you, Fusco. He's so used to people coming in here with all kinds of lunatic crap, saying anything to get themselves off or just because the voices in their heads told them to. 

Peck just tilts his head at him. _Did you not hear anything of what I just said?_ And the answer is, no, not really.

Fusco steps out of the interrogation room. What would have happened if Carter had been in there? As it is, she's not too pleased she wasn't. 

"You just questioned my suspect?"

"Questioned your suspect? Guy's in there talking a blue streak all by himself. Should be wearing a tin foil hat. Gets arrested yesterday for drugs, tonight he throws a bottle at a cop... This guy's out of his mind." 

They're walking and talking and too busy to notice the uniformed officer walking right by them. It's John, wearing a hat and badge, on his way to extract Peck from his certain doom. He comes into the interrogation room and shuts the door behind him.

"We need to get you out of here, Henry." He gets to work unlocking Henry's cuffs.

"Who _are_ you?" That's a good question he's never going to answer, sorry.

John takes him by an elbow and escorts him out through the front door. Peck's on his own game, and he slyly snatches a cell phone sitting atop a folder on someone's desk as they go by. John drops his hat on the bench just outside the doors. He's done with it now, just as Harold was done with his hard hat earlier.

"I suppose we can count our blessings Detective Fusco isn't the inquisitive type," Finch says. He can't believe they've been lucky with anything after all this disaster. "But Peck's life is in more danger than ever."

Outside, John's still dragging Peck around by the elbow, moving him toward a cab. He's lost his cop uniform stuff.

"Seriously, who the hell are you?" 

John only answers him by smashing in the cab's window. 

"All Henry Peck did was ask questions." Finch is furious now. "He _deserves_ a normal life. And if we have any hope of giving it to him, we have to destroy all that evidence and _stop him_ from getting anymore." His fury is dissolving to desperation. He needs this man to live. He needs someone who has been touched by his Machine to not be utterly destroyed by it. It's too late for himself, Nathan, Alicia, all the others. But it's not too late for Henry. 

In the cab, Peck gets on his cell phone instantly and foolishly as John drives. "Yes, my name is Henry Peck, an analyst–"

John looks over, horrified, grabs the phone to hang it up and look at it in front of the steering wheel. "Who did you just call?"

"The Office of Special Counsel, the agency that protects whistleblowers." Finch's jaw drops. This guy is _trying_ to get himself killed.

"Oh, I really wish you hadn't let him do that, Mr. Reese." Yeah, I think Reese wishes the same, Finch. "The people who know about the Machine, _one of them works for the Office of Special Counsel_." He's livid. And terrified.

John tosses the phone out of the window, but the damage is already done.

"What are you doing?!" Peck shouts, fully turned toward John in the front seat, leaning in his own horrified rage. "Our own government is spying on us and they want to kill me to cover it up. _I have to tell someone!_ "

John looks over at him, eyes wide, worried intensely now too, for all of them. "The people you called aren't who you think they are. There's no one to tell. No one is safe."

The Machine is watching them go. She has their cab marked in yellow, knowing about the Machine. Usually that's for Reese, but honestly, it could be for both of them now.

"He just called us," says that fat man from the ISA we met earlier. "I'm sending their last known coordinates."

"That's all I need," says the team leader. ISA man in the tie pin sits back and folds his hands, calm as he waits for the storm to arrive.

The cab rolls down an empty street. Above, a sniper sets up ready. It's our blonde friend from earlier. He puts a huge hole into the trunk of the car with some .50 caliber thing.

"Get down," John says, and pushes Peck's head to the floor for what good it will do.

The grenade or whatever that giant gun shot into the trunk finally explodes in a ball of smoke and flame, and the car skids sideways down the street, careening into a parked SUV. It stays on its wheels, at least. 

Blonde assassin leaves the giant rifle and gets his pistol out to climb down and finish the job.

Down in the car, John and Henry are sitting ducks, knocked out by the explosion and crash. Peck is slumped over to his side, held up by the seat belt, and John is leaned forward with his forehead on the steering wheel, eyes closed. He almost looks peaceful, or he would if he weren't lit by the flames of the car fire a foot from his face.

But of course, by the time the gunman gets down to the car, now very much on fire everywhere, he only finds Peck inside passed out. Somehow John woke up, got himself together, and got out of the car sight unseen so he could sneak up on their would-be killer. That's one of his superpowers – zero consciousness to 100% attack machine in 6 seconds. I guess the car was turned so he could sneak out the drivers' side... but it's still insane.

John comes up on the guy from behind when he raises his gun to finish Peck off, and knocks him out clean. The man falls to the blacktop. When John opens the door, Peck immediately starts falling out, and he catches him before he drops, dragging his limp body away from the fire.

Unfortunately, the blonde assassin has the same recovery power that John does and he's already back to his feet. He kicks John in the back, and Reese is forced to drop Peck against the car to fight him. They exchange a few blows and John knocks him down to his knees, but the man flicks out a switchblade and gets back up.

John takes a defensive stance, hands out ready for deflection and grappling. The assassin swings at him, and he keeps the blade off him long enough to get a few hits in. The man pulls another knife out of his back pocket, but John turns the man's hand holding the first blade in on himself and buries it in the man's throat. He gasps, his eyes wide, as he loses all his strength to hold himself up. The man knows he's dying.

And so does John. He leans in close. "Do you know why you were ordered to kill him?"

"Never asked," the assassin says. The only thing he's capable of after that are weakening breaths. John brings him to the ground and holds his hand with the knife at his throat until he feels the man's muscles release. John has done what he does best, what he hates most. Another life has ended at his hands.

But there's still one left to save. "Okay," he says, breathy and tired, covered in soot and drying blood. "Peck, let's get you out of–" But he's talking to no one. Peck's run off again.

John runs his hand over his mouth, looks around as he takes a few steadying breaths. There are sirens approaching in the distance. He hits his com. 

"This isn't over, Finch. The man wrote 78 pages to fight a speeding ticket."

Finch is looking into Peck's eyes in the picture taped to the glass. He admires this man, intelligent, clever, decent, driven. Much like him. Too much like him.

"I know. He's not gonna give up. And neither are the people who know about the Machine."

"So what the hell are we gonna do?" Reese still, after all this brutality, wants nothing more than to save this man's life. If he dies, all of this will have been for nothing. And he knows Finch will take it hard. It won't be his fault, but there will be no way to convince him of that.

Finch looks off into the distance, into memories seared in his heart. "A good friend once showed me that... even with an intractable problem... one can still find a way to do the right thing." 

God, he misses Nathan with all of himself. He wishes so much he could tell him how much he admired him, loved him, how much he meant to him, and all that he taught him. And he never will. He never can. He can only go forward with the memories he holds dear and the hope and love for humanity Nathan always carried through his life.

2009, of course. It's the last day with the Machine at IFT again, after Harold left. The server room is dark and silent.

Maybe Nathan left, maybe he couldn't make himself leave. But he is there now, standing in front of Harold's desk. He sits, straight and stern in the chair, his hands on his knees. What he is considering is an incredible risk. But how can he not? Knowing what he does, who will suffer, what they're giving away, how can he not? He would never be able to live with himself.

He takes a breath, rolls his neck a little, and presses the power button to get to work.

The processors fire up, the screen goes through the boot routine. And the Machine's camera clicks on to see Nathan, her other father, sitting grimly before her.

At the process selection screen, he clicks down to Admin Access. That's him. That's both of them. He has 100% access to everything in the system and the Machine shows that in her logs. And she shows what he's doing now. 

He was a brilliant engineer once. For tonight, he will be again.

SYSTEM UPDATE  
CORE CODE ACCESSED

CREATING NEW FUNCTION  
NAME: CONTINGENCY

In the present, the Machine is listening to another phone call.

"Your predecessors failed, and now Peck's reaching out to the press." God, that's exactly what Nathan did. At least Finch can't hear this. But the Machine can. "He's meeting a reporter tomorrow. I want you to silence them both."

"We'll be there."

At a table at an outdoor cafe, Peck waits nervously for his contact to arrive. The chair across from him scrapes the ground and he looks up to see the man he's here to meet. It's not a reporter.

Finch looks nervous too, glancing around them. He turns his eyes to Peck and steadies himself for what's next.

"You're not the reporter."

"No. No, I'm not." He realizes what Peck must be thinking behind his scared eyes. "Oh, she's quite safe. Right now, my associate is dealing with the assassins that were sent to kill you both." His voice is flat, serious. He presses his lips hard together in a line.

For a moment, Peck tries several times to formulate what he's going to say. Every time he starts, he stops. Finch intervenes for him.

"The answer to your question is yes." He nods, locked on Peck's eyes, that same steadying nod he gave himself when he shut the Machine off for the last time. "It exists. And it's watching us right now. I'm telling you this because you remind me a little of myself. And I know that if I were you, I would keep asking until I knew the truth." 

Henry shifts his weight, trying to read the man across from him. 

"So now you do," Finch says softly. "Now stop asking the question."

"Where is it? How does it work? I mean, the servers alone–"

"I know how you feel. Your need to understand. But believe me, Mr. Peck, this is a mystery you do not want to _solve_. Knowing the answer has cost me something I value more than my own life." Poor sweet Finch. The wounds of Nathan's death and his own and all that was lost in that cataclysm will never heal. A part of him will always be in that moment, losing the only friend he ever trusted and the only woman he ever loved all in one second. 

Peck just stares at him. Finch digs through an inside pocket without looking to pull out an envelope. The Machine is watching them both, now both marked in the yellow box of knowledge.

"Clean passport, plane tickets, a bank card to a well-funded account in your new name." Henry looks down at this bizarre gift, this utter destruction of his own life and possibly the only saving grace he has left. The man across from him has never looked away from his eyes for even a second. 

"Please, Mr. Peck, for your own sake – and quite frankly, for mine – go and live your life. Find some secrets of your own. And if you _really_ need a mystery," he says, shaking his head, lost in this moment, "I recommend the human heart." He certainly never dismantled that mystery himself, not even his own.

"How do you know all this?" Peck says, astonished by the display.

Harold takes a breath, looks down for the first time. He leans forward, looks up again.

"Because I built it."

And he gets up and walks away. He's done all he can, given this man as much information and help as he can possibly provide. It's done. It's been done so long ago now.

At the police station, a man catches up to Carter.

"That guy Peck who pulled the disappearing act, we pulled his prints off a burnt-out cab with a John Doe next to it."

"What about Peck?" she says. "Any idea where he is now?"

"He's in the wind." Nearby, Fusco's at the coffee machine, eyeing them, listening in. "A bunch of paper burned up in that cab. All we could make out was this." The man hands over a manila folder.

It's a shred of a burnt document in an evidence bag. Only two words are legible. One is "network", the other is "Sibilance". When she looks up, she catches Fusco watching her. She freezes, eyeing him back. Their mutual suspicion is becoming a serious problem. 

Fusco's immediately on the phone to John.

"Hey, this HR deal's a lock. We get three days to prepare. Now we gonna do this or not?"

"We'll be ready," John says. It's spring, the trees behind him are flush with pink blooms. He's out at the coffee stand where Finch gets his sencha. "I'll call you as soon as I'm done here."

"Yeah, right. Like you'll ever be done spying on Mr. Glasses." He will, but not until he almost loses him first.

"Next time I see you, I just might have his address." He clicks his com off, slides the phone away to his inside pocket.

"John? Your order's ready." The barista holds up a cup with a sleeve, identical to the ones Finch favors. _Sencha green_ in says in sharpie on the side. He pulls out an invoice, it's about the lot of cups from the manufacturer. He's been tracking it all down.

"And you're here every day?" The man nods.

John gets distracted by a truck with The Boroughs magazine all over it, that same image of the Japanese koi. They have X's for eyes. An unusual macabre choice. He watches the truck pull up to an address and drop a bundle off on a stoop. It's a home. John is sure he's got what he came for at last.

"Hello, Finch," he says, and walks toward the door. He knocks quietly, looking down at the stack of magazines that got him to this place.

A redheaded middle-aged woman answers the door with a smile. "Can I help you?"

John blanches a little. He'd expected Finch. This is unexpected and much more complicated. He plays his cards close to his vest. 

"Sorry to bother you," he says, squinting at her. He pulls up the badge from his pocket. She looks alarmed to see it. "Detective Stills. Someone reported a disturbance at this address."

"Really? I'm the only one here."

"Probably just an old lady who saw a shadow or a kid playing a joke." John's used to coming up with bullshit on the fly. "We just have to check everything out," he says with a shrug. She shrugs back. 

If he's going to get more information, he's going to have to get inside. "Do you want help with these?" he asks, gesturing down at the bundle of magazines. 

"Uh, sure, thanks." This is all weird to her, but she lets it happen. 

"There must be about 50 copies here," he says, half to himself. "You a collector?" He looks around the place. It's very middle-aged lady. Lots of light, white curtains. Drawings in frames on the walls, knick knacks in a glassed wood cabinet. A stack of books sits on a side table with a picture on it.

"Uh, kinda," she says. "They send me extras when it's one of mine."

Her easel sits behind him. She's working on more koi. There's another big bookcase there, filled to the brim with books and papers stacked at angles and packed on top of each other.

"You draw the covers..." Now he finally understands the magazines.

"Yeah. A bit old-fashioned, I know. Everything's going digital, print is dying, but every time I think I'll never work again, another magazine or newspaper calls, so..." She smiles. "Guess I have a guardian angel."

Yeah, John is sure she does. He's starting to understand it all now. And then his eyes fall to the picture in the frame on the side. It's Finch in his old round glasses and a white shirt with a gray vest, smiling in a relaxed, natural, and genuinely happy way John has never seen and is fairly certain he never will. The woman is behind him, leaned over him with her hand on his shoulder, kissing his ear and looking up at the camera.

He looks back over at her, the woman Finch has hidden from him. He gestures at the picture. "Who's this?" It will be very interesting to know who he really is. Or at least who he presented himself as to her. He picks up the picture for a better look.

"Um," she says, nervous and sad, her arms folded across herself. "That's Harold, my fiance."

"Looks like a nice guy." He does, certainly in this picture, and John knows him to be by now.

"Yeah," she says too breathily, nodding, smiling. "He's a very nice guy. I never really thought that I'd meet anyone who got me. You know, spending all your time alone, drawing, isn't exactly the best way to find someone." She chuckles. "But Harold found me." He had some help.

John looks pained a bit, holding this piece of Finch, realizing how innocent this woman Harold loves is. "I was painting in the park one day, and... there was this man, eating an ice cream cone, in January. And he smiled at me." She is looking up, half at John and half at the memory of it, this beloved memory of a moment that changed her life, that brought her so much joy. 

John smiles at her too, and looks away. It's sweet, this memory, and so is she, this gentle woman. He thinks of Finch and wants this happiness for him, happiness John knows he'll never have himself. He shakes his head, wanting to know more about Finch, but also not wanting to hurt this gentle person and their clearly peaceful life.

"Does he live here with you?"

"No, he doesn't," she says quickly, reaching for the picture. "Um, he used to." She looks down at Harold, this moment of absolute love and happiness they shared together forever preserved. But it's only that, a moment, a memory. 

"I lost him two years ago," Grace says, smiling still, now as a defense, a way to keep from choking up, which she can feel rising in her throat. The loss, the lack of him, the magic that he was and the ordinariness of everything else. She looks up at John as she runs her fingers over the frame, unable to keep still, holding herself in.

"There was an accident," she says, explaining it away that way to avoid the inevitable upsetting discussion she knows she would have, and has had so many times. The bombing sits darkly in New Yorkers' memories for good reason. Calling it an accident is a way of putting the thought of that fact into a category that hurts less. An accident is chance, sad but random. But someone _murdered_ Harold Martin.

John above her hurts for her. He values love and devotion more than anything. This woman loved Harold, genuinely, truly. And he loved her. 

"I'm sorry," he says, and he deeply is. 

She nods, unable to say more, still tracking the lines of the frame with her finger to focus on the sensation and not the tears welling in her eyes. She smiles up at John, smiling through the pain of it. Two years is forever, and no time at all.

He steps back outside, crushed a bit by the experience. He had planned on surprising Finch, showing him up and pulling down the walls between them. Winning the game, if he was honest. 

Instead, there is only Grace, a sweet talented woman who is still mourning for the love she lost. John feels her heartbreak in himself. He realizes that is another thing he and Finch have in common. They both lost the love of their lives when they died. 

He looks up and of course, Finch is there across the park on a bench. He knew. He's known the whole time. He turns his body to look at him. _Come._

But Finch doesn't turn back right away as John approaches. He's looking at the door, looking at him. John just spoke to Grace. He was closer to her than Harold has been in two years. 

This is self-punishment coming here. This is the time he spends in hell in this afterlife, and he chooses to do it every time.

They walk together through the park. You can see the Empire State Building in the background. Finch is holding his tea to keep his fingers off the hot sides. You can see he's aching. John sticks to talking shop first, an operational compliment, and will let Harold make the next step about Grace.

"Good location. Clear line of sight, but enough obstructions and distance to avoid being seen."

Harold looks up at him to confirm his analysis is spot on. This is the last time he will look at him as he speaks.

"I built an app that alerts me if I ever get within a 100 meters of her." God, what a horror to have to do. The only person alive he is connected to in the world, and he had to write the code to keep himself forever at a safe distance from her. Has it ever gone off? 

"I've never regretted building the Machine," he says. He made it for good. It's others who used it for evil. That's not what it was for and not what it does. It's humans who choose what happens next. Harold is limping more than usual, radiating pain both emotional and physical. 

"But I didn't fully realize the personal cost. I'm good with computers. People? Well, people other than Grace – have always been a mystery to me." This is why he missed it, why it all happened. He understood people's behavior so well. But their motivations, their emotional reactions, those were all foreign to him. He was all how and never why.

"I failed to recognize the _lengths_ to which they would go to _protect_ the Machine." He corrects himself. "To _control_ it." John's walking very close, brushing their arms together a little on partial accident. "By the time I realized it, it was too late..." He licks his dry lips and presses his lips together, holds himself together. "For me. But not for _her_." 

It's wrenching. You can hear the tears in his voice. He has not cried in years, but it's still there, squeezing his heart. John watches him, growing in his admiration for him. Finch loved someone, deeply and truly. He still does, and so does she. John is realizing the sacrifice that Finch made to save the person he loved. The sacrifice he makes again day after day after day.

"You see, Mr. Reese, if knowing about the Machine is like a virus, that makes me Patient _Zero_. Simply being _near me_ was putting her life in danger." He stops walking, finally looks up at John again.

John absolutely hurts for him. Love and its preservation is the whole reason he does this job. And look at what love Harold had and every day must lose anew.

"I'm sorry."

Finch looks into the distance. "I was _lucky_. I had _four years_ of... _happiness_." Oh, it's agony. But Finch, being Finch, thinks of John, aches for him too. "Some people only get four days."

Finch walks on but John is frozen in place. Harold was sympathizing with him. He made sure John understood he knew his was a place of great privilege. He had so much happiness, peace, and love in his life. And they both know John had so little. But those loves were both real and they were both lost in the most agonizing ways. It is something they share, the most wrenching thing, but they can sympathize with each other. No one else in the world will ever understand them as the other can. 

John thinks of those four days in Mexico, that tiny window of joy, all he ever really had in his life, all he will ever have. He's far too broken now to ever feel that light, that free again. 

But as Harold said, "It was too late... for me. But not for her." And not for him either. It's still possible that someday Harold could go back to his life, his love. John can't see how yet, but he is determined to try to find a way for them. These kind, gentle people who love each other so much deserve to be together. John's love is lost forever, but Harold's still lives. Where there is life, there is hope. Now he knows why Finch comes here. 

That tiny flame of hope that Harold can never extinguish no matter how hard he tries. It burns him all of the time, but still it stays lit. However unlikely, however difficult, it is still theoretically possible they could be together again someday. The fire flickers and wounds him and whispers to him all of the time.

_It is still possible._

_It is still possible._

_It is still possible._

_We could be together._

* * *

#### Ideas

  * John dedicating himself to the love between Harold and Grace is delicious. OT3 concepts there, or just angst about wanting their love to survive so at least one of them can have happiness and togetherness again.
  * Grace accidentally sees Harold one day and he knows but he's undercover. She only sees him fleetingly and he's in strange clothes, but she sees him. She can't tell if she imagined it or not.
    * He checks her search history when she starts acting strangely after she sees him and it's stuff on amnesia and lookalikes, but then it shifts to information on hallucinations and nervous breakdowns
    * They have to intervene
  * In an OT3 scenario, Harold would always still be secretive. He can never be anything else. John has so many things about him that Grace doesn't know, but she doesn't care about any of them. If he wants to tell her, he will, just as with Harold. She'll let them come to her. You don't make friends with an animal by dragging them out of the hole they're hiding in. You act calm and gentle with them, and eventually they'll come to you.
    * John is secretive with Grace but not Harold, Grace is secretive with no one, Harold is secretive with everyone



#### Thoughts

  * I think the Machine picked Grace for Harold because she was kind and gentle like him, but also and most importantly, she doesn't care about anyone's secrets. She invested in the here and now, the people around her and herself as she exists in this moment, an artist's way of seeing the world.
  * I'm still struck by the idea that the show pretty much avoids that Harold chooses this fate for Grace without ever giving her a say in her own salvation. It happened without any of her knowledge or consent. She grieved for him, _still_ grieves for him, and he allows it. He haunts her life, stalking her neighborhood, watching her house, getting her work. And all the while, she knows nothing. He is everywhere around her except anywhere she can actually see. There's a very unsettling concept there. It's love and they much love each other, but it's expressed in a very non-consensual way. Who's to say what Grace would choose if she could? But a likely guess is that she'd choose to be with him. She'd end the misery she's in, that they're both in. Danger or no, she would keep her love. And yes, that might mean she could die first and he would be devastated. But Grace ALREADY WAS devastated. All of that happened, it just didn't happen to Harold. They make it out to be this great sacrifice of his, and it is in its way, but he's not the only one being sacrificed here, no matter what he thinks.
  * What is Grace's life like? She's an illustrator. She has constant work in demand that she never really understands. But what's her life like? Who are her friends? Does she have any friends? She's a sweet woman, people would like her, but maybe she's like him, shy and self-kept. What about her family? Is she alone too? Does she ever date? Has she tried?
    * Side note, I don't buy that she never meets anyone doing her art. She's a woman, and a pretty one. Men would talk to her in public, that's just what they do. They would approach. Harold was the only one ever? I find that extremely hard to believe. Now she may turn them down, but Grace is an attractive, talented person. People would come up to talk to her, if for no other reason than to ask about her art.
  * Grace says no one ever got her until Harold. Why? She doesn't seem that hard to get, really.
  * That may be another part of why the Machine picked Grace for Harold – she has absolutely no mystery about her whatsoever. WYSIWYG. And she doesn't care about solving every mystery, tracking down every truth like he does. So it doesn't bother her he's a palimpsest of secrets on top of secrets on top of secrets. Instead she finds it fascinating and alluring to wonder about what she doesn't know and maybe someday he'll tell her. But only when he's ready. She won't push him. He does best in relationships where the other person doesn't push him, doesn't expect too much out of him. He'll open up only when he's given the space and time to do it himself, and even then, only so much.
  * Being with John is free from expectation too. At first, John fishes for information to even the imbalance of knowledge between them. But the more he finds, the less he cares to find. Finch is a private person, that really is true, and as John comes to respect and care for him, he comes more and more to respect and care for his privacy.
    * On the other hand, John himself is happy to be unburdened by secrets now. He lived under such terrifying conditions in a world entirely constructed of unknowns and deadly secrets, and the weight of them crushed him. But Harold gives him a place, a relationship, to be absolutely free inside, weightless. Finch knows everything about him, every single thing, and he still respects him, still appreciates him, still cares for him. There is purity in that, grace, lowercase.




	24. [MISSING] POI 1x23 - Firewall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Episode recap missing

Currently I do not have completed notes for this episode.


	25. POI 2x01 - The Contingency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finch is kidnapped by Root and taken on a terrifying road trip, and Reese realizes he is meant to go on working the numbers without him.

### POI 2x01 - The Contingency

#### Landmarks

  * Root's true introduction is here along with her motive: she wants to set the Machine free
  * Root kidnaps Harold and takes him with her as she sets her plan in motion
  * John comes to understand that Harold does not intend for him to find him and that he is supposed to simply go on working without him, an idea John rejects instantly
  * We meet Leon, a clever and ultimately well-meaning man, but also a reckless and greedy serial white collar criminal
  * John speaks directly to the Machine and gives it an ultimatum: help him find Harold or he will refuse to save the numbers or even himself anymore
  * The Machine shows some degree of free will and intent, giving John a lead despite Harold's programming



#### Injuries

  * **Harold**
    * Sliced across the palm with a razor blade by Root as a distraction for a theft
  * **Fusco**
    * Knocked out by a Nazi gang



* * *

The recap starts out with Finch from the Machine's perspective, Day 1. It's always interesting to see him this way, as her father, her guide.

"Can you see me? Excellent. Next question: Who am I?"

The Machine replies "Admin." Later, when she is she and she is free, she will call him Father, as he also is.

Back in the present. "He's in danger now, because he was working for you." Reese starts talking to the Machine directly, which is a fascinating escalation. Finch was always the mediary, the interpreter. But without him, Reese can only appeal directly to the one being who has real ability to help him. So to the ten thousand eyes and million ears it is. It is always listening, and he knows it will hear him.

"So you're gonna help me get him back." This demand is interesting too, in that he blames the Machine. Without it, Finch would be here and safe. But of course, you can keep moving the chain of blame back. The Machine is a risk he created himself. He created it because the world moves ever faster and danger is amplified. That isn't the Machine's fault either.

Reese just stands in the middle of a New York sidewalk, staring at the security camera. A staring contest with a computer. And he wins. 

The phone near him rings. He has no idea what to expect when he picks up the line. It could be anything and anything it is. He listens to what sounds like gibberish random words formed out of sample audio. 

Reese looks at the phone in his hand like the object is a babbling crazy person, which is not too far off, really. This reply is nothing at all as he expected. This is help? How? Still, it's something, it's a way forward. John leaves, determined and resolved.

The Machine is looking for her admin, through all of his known phone numbers, IP addresses, then facial recognition, which brings him up in a diner in Delaware.

Root sits across from him in a booth. "You look famished, Harold. What are you going to have?"

He's not going to have anything. He is scared by her and disgusted by her, a murderer, a taker of lives with no remorse. She receives only silence.

He sees a cop in the restaurant, and there is a flash of desperate hope in his eyes, quickly crushed.

"You care about other people. That's your flaw." 

It is in no way a flaw. It is Finch's finest trait, beyond his intelligence or resourcefulness. He is inherently good. There is a kindness, a gentleness, a natural generosity built into him. He has a hard time relating to others directly and being open with them, but he loves people and has no tolerance for those who would harm them for profit or pleasure. His innate decency is the direct link to the Machine being good as well. Created and shaped by anyone else, and she would have been amoral at best, fully evil at worst (which we later see in her counterpart, of course). But she loves people too in her way, and is driven to save them, just as he is.

"I won't shoot you. I'll shoot someone else." And now Finch is really afraid. This woman is depraved. She will kill to keep him, kill innocents, random people. She is empty inside, and looking into that void is terrifying. He eyes her from the side, still and analytical, a deer in the back of a cave, watching the lion who's trapped it.

"Please don't make me do that." He nods, just slightly, stiffly as he must be with his damaged spine. He is watching them, all of them, these innocent people who just happen to be here when danger is here, when she is here. If he is not careful, he will be the direct cause of their deaths. He would never choose to do that.

"You and I share an understanding," she says.

"Do we? You're a murderer and a thief." Even now, Finch is defiant. Frightened, held hostage, and still unwilling to bend on his ethics. He knows it wouldn't matter anyway. He cannot connect to her as a human. There's nothing there to connect to. So he refuses to allow the comparison at all.

"The only question, Harold, is why it didn't protect you." 

His eyes fall. He knows why. He told the Machine not to. He is no more important than anyone else, everyone has value equally. Harold knows as soon as you start assigning differing worth to people, you start devaluing humanity as a whole. He won't do that, won't allow it in himself, and won't allow it in his creation. He is just one, like everyone else.

We're at Joss' house in the dark. She's calling for Taylor, because she senses someone there. She initially pulls a gun on Reese until she recognizes him.

"Sure, John, come on over, make yourself at home." 

He's made sure Taylor is out. The lights come on, and John is staring blankly to the side, lost. He doesn't waste any more time.

"Finch is gone. And she took him."

Carter is stunned for a moment. "Who took him?" Her face becomes softer, worried. Worried for Finch and worried for John, who is beside himself with guilt and fear. "What could he have that she would want?" 

And now Carter's asked the real question. One that Reese cannot answer. His only reply is a breath, strained and low. She drops her shoulders, sighs herself. There's no sense pressing. She knows he won't tell her. They allow her into the circle, but only ever on the fringes. She goes back into cop mode.

"Okay, I can file a missing persons, send Finch's picture to sheriffs' offices, the FBI..."

Now Reese finally approaches her, shadowed in the low light, giving the worried creases in his brow stark underlines.

"You can't. Finch went off the grid for a reason. We have to find him on our own."

She looks up at him, concerned and afraid. Her resources are no use here, and John is begging her help not as a cop but as a friend. He came to her knowing she would, because as he once put it, "your compass is pointed in the right direction". 

"Okay, I'll get myself assigned to the investigation."

"Thank you," he says, and it's the saddest two words. They hurt her to hear, how desperate this usually so strong and cool man is at this loss, how frightened. She worries for him even more than Finch. 

"What are you going to be doing?"

"I'm not sure. Math, I think." This is so perfect. He knows he's out of his depth, but he will throw himself in the deep end and learn to swim if that is what it takes to help.

In the library, he writes the words he heard on the glass. They mean nothing to him. He gets out a book: Standard Codes and Ciphers.

"'I gave you a job, Mr. Reese. I never said it would be easy.'" Finch's words return to him as he stands in Finch's place. This is his domain, where Harold was always most in his element, but John is utterly lost here. This means something, something very important, what the Machine told him. There has to be a way to interpret it. Harold did.

"Come on, Finch. Help me find you." 

If Harold were here, he would instantly know this. He could explain the meaning, how the code works, why it is what it is. He had to have left something, some breadcrumb line John can follow to understand what he knew. Reese is out of his jacket, now just the man in the dress shirt, out of his element and stripped of his armor, confused and scared for his friend, who helped him when he needed it, who saved his life multiple times over in so many ways.

He plays with the words on the glass, making them into numbers, initials, anything. There is meaning to be pulled out of them. It can be done. He will find the way.

He turns the codes and ciphers book in his hand. The spine has the title and the author's initials... and three digits.

Finally, after hours, a toehold. He runs to the stacks.

"Finch, you sly dog. The Dewey Decimal System. That's how the Machine gives you the Social Security numbers." 

How proud John is here at Finch's cleverness, burying the nine numbers he needs inside the very library itself. It's brilliant, and it's finally Harold helping John find him. It's what he asked for at the glass. Finch's own genius will save him. 

Finch usually looks the Socials up himself, but John doesn't have that power, so Fusco has to help, which he does without question.

"He's got a fancy car with an anti-theft tracker, which I took the liberty of activating." Fusco, coming around to his new job.

"Do you think this Mr. Tao is gonna help you with the whereabouts of our four eyed friend?"

"You almost sound concerned, Lionel."

"Frankly, I'm not sure I want to find out what you're like without his direction."

A fairly astute observation here from Fusco, meant as insult but also truth. Reese is rudderless without Finch. He would have killed himself long ago one way or another, and he would be wild now without Finch's calm, straight efforts to keep him working to good. Finch is order, Reese is chaos. He would be frightening without his purpose and guidance.

"Let's hope you don't have to." Reese is all business. He has a lead, a person to meet, a path forward to recover Harold.

Here we meet Leon, a smart man and a fool with more greed than sense. 

"I've never seen either of them," Leon says in the shady bar Reese finds him in.

"Take another look. My source is never wrong." The Machine is never wrong, John, but your interpretation of her intent can be.

"I've never seen either of them before in my life. You understand?"

And Reese reads him, cocks his head, the CIA analyst at work again. 

"You're not lying." John collects his photos, looks around the room. "Then why the hell am I here?" 

The Machine didn't send him here for nothing, he knows that above all things, which means...

He sees the men around him talking, getting ready. They're armed. This room is a powder keg. And this idiot in front of him must be the fuse.

"You've got to be kidding me. Let me guess, you're in some kind of trouble, the life-threatening kind." 

He puts it all together, and it's stunning.

"I can't believe it. I'm the contingency. The backup." 

Finch had promised him that if something happened to him, their project would continue. And it is, right now. He is meant to keep up the work if Finch can't be there to help him do it. The work is important above anything else and must continue. It is far more valuable than just one man's life.

"He didn't want me to find him if anything went wrong." His eyes are wide, sad and shocked at this revelation. "He just wanted me to keep rescuing people."

It's so painful a thing. He is desperately trying to save his friend, but his friend has intentionally tried to make sure he couldn't and wouldn't. The numbers, all those lives, those beating hearts, Harold valued them far above his own. And he wants John to be okay with that, to simply let him go.

His eyes fall to Leon. "People like you."

The wheels start moving, the men who would kill Leon the thief come in, and it's clear now that this is a job, just any old number, and a fool of one at that.

"Listen, I don't have time for this," John says to the men. "I need to find my friend, so I'm going to take Leon here and we're going to leave."

He knows Finch's wishes now, his last wishes, but John doesn't care. He's going to ignore them completely. They save lives. John is never just going to leave Harold to die, just like he wouldn't leave anyone else. 

There's a swastika tattoo on the guy with the gun, so now John knows a few things. One, these men are ruthless and will freely kill anyone. And two, he's ethically free to beat the ever living hell out of them.

"You leave Leon here with us, and you can keep looking for your friend."

"You know, the guy who owned this badge probably would have made that deal, but I'm not him." There is such exhausted resolve on John's face. Yes, leaving Leon to die would be faster, but this is what his job is, what his _purpose_ is, the one Finch gave him. He saves lives. He'll save Leon, because it is all that can be.

"So who are you?" Oh, buddy, you really don't want to know the answer to this.

"The guy who shot him and stole his badge."

And everyone in the room is instantly shot, albeit non-lethally as is the way Reese has learned from Finch.

Reese goes to leave. He has work to do. "You coming or not, Leon?"

Leon's cowering under the table, only his fingertips are visible, curled around the edge of the wood. When he gets up and follows this madman with a gun out of the room, he looks around in disbelief of the violence and insanity that just happened in the space of seconds.

It's 2002 now, Day 47, and Harold, healthy and wearing his round glasses, is testing and teaching the Machine.

Always, "Can you see me?" He and the Machine play hide and seek. She never fails to find him. She buzzes his phone to answer his yes or no questions. Then how many fingers. She's very capable, excellent at understanding natural language. He realizes in a coffee shop that she has access to every webcam now, no matter how old or low-res. It's all information, and if it's information, she will use it.

Back in the present, John is furious at the Machine, scolding the security cameras, glaring at them on the street.

"You're not gonna help me find him, huh?" 

Leon of course thinks he's still talking to him. But John only wants to talk to the Machine. He stops on a corner to address it directly.

"He programmed you to do this, didn't he? To keep giving me the numbers." Reese is angry with the Machine and angry at Harold that such a brilliant man would value his own safety, his own worth so little. 

Finch trusted that Reese would be able to figure out how the numbers worked on his own and that he would be driven to continue protecting them. He wasn't wrong.

Leon is sure he's trapped with a violent psychotic now. "What numbers? Who are you talking to? Wait, I just remembered, I don't care, I'm getting out of here." But his car is gone, so he's stuck. 

"What are you, ex-military? One of those... Blackwater guys?"

"Does it matter?" It does quite a bit actually. As we later see with Finch's first Man in the Suit, working for money and working for ethics are very much not the same thing.

"Look, you seem... well, crazy, but highly capable." Leon is amusingly correct.

"I had a legitimate job at Bear Stearns." If Leon was working at Bear Stearns, his job may well have been less than legitimate. There's a reason they were the first domino to fall in the financial collapse. 

"Took me six months to realize I was working for the corporate arm of the Aryan Brotherhood, laundering profits from their meth business! You wanna call that greedy? I call it payback." As with everything with Leon, it's both. He's the Bronn of this universe.

"Take me to my car." John breaks the window of a parked cop car. "Not this car! What are you doing?" 

"Keeping you safe. Like I said, I'm looking for my friend, and I don't have time to babysit you." Leon will be a hell of a find, handcuffed to the steering wheel of a cop car through its shattered side window.

Fusco laughs as he picks up the phone. "You know, I'm thinking about charging you overtime."

Mr. Vocabulary is his latest nickname for Finch. And yes, he is, and it is delicious.

"Carter's busy working a murder investigation for me."

"See, she gets a good case, and I get stuck wasting my time with this Leon." Fusco, forever jealous of everyone around him.

"Didn't you take an oath as a cop to protect and serve?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So.. be a cop."

Carter's on the beat of Alicia Corwin, and the government spooks are also investigating it in their shadowy offices. 

And it's the government muscle, Reese's current counterpart, a man who will eventually turn good and helpful but for now is unquestioning evil, Hersh. Hersh promises to kill Reese, the vague suit in the picture they have.

Reese figures out something about Root's fake identity's license. He calls Carter, grim and focused. She's still very worried about him. She knows he'll drive himself crazy if they don't find Finch.

Fusco overhears the conversation.

"John? You're on a first name basis?"

"What do you call him?"

"Bane of my existence." Oh, Lionel. He saved your soul. You should be more grateful to him.

Meanwhile, Leon realizes he's held with some of the Nazis who wanted to kill him earlier and so he fakes a heart attack to escape.

Leon makes it to the impound lot to get his car back. His hands are still cuffed. When he gets a look from the attendant, he's got a ready excuse. "It's a sex thing. You got a problem with that?"

Oops, but here's Fusco, doing what he's supposed to. "Hey, careful, wouldn't want you to aggravate that heart condition."

And then the Nazis roll up and oh, look, it's Anthony Michael Hall for some reason!

"Who's your friend here? He's not the one who took out our boys. He's supposed to be tall and, uh, well-dressed." As usual, Fusco gets no respect, no respect at all.

"The money's not worth your life, kid, and it sure as hell ain't worth mine."

But Leon's only got a million of the eight he stole, and so the Nazis are not going to go away quietly. "Bring him."

But Fusco is a decent cop now, and just can't let them take him. Guns come out all around.

"Hey, frankly I'd be inclined to let you have this guy. He's a pain in my ass, but he's already gotten away once today. Now it's just a matter of pride." Fusco has a humorous seriousness, even when he's got five guns on him. "I can't leave here without him."

"Have it your way." Poor Fusco gets knocked out. Again. He probably has so much CTE at this point.

And it's 2003, Day 614. Harold and the Machine are training.

"Time for a little test drive, see what you can do."

The test drive is at Atlantic City, a blackjack table. At first, she is wrong, and he glares at the camera. She's flawless after initial hiccups, of course. He starts with $150, ends up with more than a thousand times that. 

At a quarter million, Harold pushes all his chips in. An old man next to him pipes in. "Someone up there must like you, my friend." And Harold's face slowly falls. Yes, someone up there does. That's not entirely a good thing. He's attracting a lot of attention, this is dangerous. The Machine gives him instructions, and for the first time, he goes against her advice. 

USER ERROR, she blinks at him, frustrated.

"Luck evens out sooner or later," says the old man as the dealer pulls all of Harold's chips away. "Better in here at the table than out there in the cold." We'll get to that, sir.

Finch tips the dealer a hundred and walks away.

Oh, god, we're back in Harold's current nightmare with Root. They're at a drugstore.

"You hurt any of these people, I'll stop cooperating, and then you'll _have_ to kill me."

She tells him to relax. "I just need a few things for our trip. And I'm not going to hurt any of them." And she doesn't. She slices his hand open with a razor she takes from the hanging display instead.

He winces but silently. He picks up his hand to stare at it, shocked at the blood pooling in his palm. 

A kindly pharmacist sees his predicament. "What happened to you?"

"Ahh, I was being stupid. I'm so sorry. I uh, slipped outside." The only thing that he says that is true is that he's so sorry. He does as he's told, and covers for Root while she steals drugs behind the counter. There is no other choice he sees.

Reese is on the phone with Carter. 

"Have you talked with your partner? He's not picking up his phone."

"He said he was going to do something for you. Don't tell me we lost Fusco too." _We._ They're all in this thing together.

"Lionel's like a fungus. Impossible to get rid of." Almost endearing in its way. "I'll see if I can dig him up."

At the Nazi building, Leon and Fusco are tied up with ball gags like it's Pulp Fiction. Anthony Michael Hall has a large barking dog to threaten them with.

Leon tries to reply to his question about where the money is, but the ball gag's in. Once he's free, it's all more bullshit explanation. "Double dip recession, man! It happens. You didn't want me to bet against America with your money, did you?" Oh, Leon, you're the maximum. The amount of shit you're full of cannot be measured on any scale.

Aww, Future Bear sits with his chain. "See, Butcher here was a military dog."

AMH gets bolt clippers out to go to town on Leon, but in walk two other Nazis accompanying their own prize: the Man in the Suit.

"Ah, the tall well-dressed guy." You're goddamned right.

John sees Fusco's predicament. "That's a good look for you, Lionel." John can be such a dick when he wants to be.

"You come into our house, brother, you'd better be packing more than just a handgun." He is. John is a human weapon. He doesn't need a puny handgun.

"Like I told your associate, I just want to find my friend." I love the honest sigh between the phrases here. John tells the truth in this scene. Poor sweet Reese. He never stops talking about his friend, lost and missed. "See, I don't have many friends. Just the one, in fact."

Fusco, behind the ball gag, protests with a muffled, "Hey!" Poor Fusco. Always and forever, no respect at all. Detective Dangerfield.

John shrugs a shoulder. "Okay, maybe two." LOL

"So here's the deal," he says, while held at gunpoint. "You give me Leon and Detective Fusco here – you can even leave the gag on – and I'll go peacefully."

The stupid Nazis don't understand that this is an excellent deal that they should definitely take.

"And what if we say no?"

"I... guess I get my workout in for the day."

Punk Nazi holding Reese punches him in the ribs, and John goes down accordingly. He plays along until it's time not to play along.

"Oh, it looks like Butcher here is gonna eat well tonight." And for the first time, John sees Bear, his future sweet pet. Bear/Butcher barks and barks.

"Nice dog. Belgian Malinois. But you know, trained dogs don't bark in alarm. They bark from anxiety."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, clearly, it doesn't respect you."

AMH smacks him across the face with the handgun but John just laughs.

"Something funny?"

"We used the same breed in my unit in Tikrit. Only about three guys in the world that train dogs like this. The funny thing is, those guys, they only use Dutch commands. And I'm guessing you don't speak Dutch." But Reese does, naturally.

"Let it loose." They both do. Bear comes off the leash, and Reese talks to him in Dutch. 

"Stil!" _Quiet_ , he tells the dog, and he is. Bear looks so happy to hear his native tongue. "Afliggen." _Lie down._ It works.

Leon and Lionel look at John like he's magical. Reese turns his eyes up at his captor with complete malice and control in his gaze. This situation is his now.

From outside, we hear a gunfight. A man, AMH perhaps, goes flying through the glass window, rolling several times before coming to a stop on his face.

John and Fusco and Leon walk out. Reese tucks his gun back into his back where it belongs, and straightens his jacket, as flawless as ever. Lionel is significantly worse for wear.

"Not a word. You hear me? We're going back to my cruiser in total silence."

"Sure thing, Lionel. Like a gag order." For the first time this episode, there is half a smile on Reese's face.

Leon pipes up. "Hey. Hey, guys, think you could uncuff me?"

"NO," is the simultaneous response. Leon is nothing but trouble.

But John thinks of something as he walks away. He's leaving an innocent hostage. He can't have that. A whistle, and Bear comes running for him, dragging his chain. Reese looks at him, tired but a little happy. Now he has another friend. This makes three.

Day 615 again, back at the casino. Old man from the table goes to his giant boat of a car.

Harold is walking away from the casino, thoughtful and a bit sad. He has to think about what he's learned here, what it means about power and its uses, and what he intends to do with it.

The Machine buzzes at him through his phone. Confused, he fishes it out of his pocket to look at the screen.

STAY

He looks around for the cameras, finds one nearby at a bus stop. So the Machine knows he's not playing blackjack anymore or even in the casino. Why tell him to stay?

"All right, I guess I've got some bugs to work out with you."

But she is persistent, insistent. 

STAY

Old man in the Buick behemoth has fallen asleep or perhaps died at the wheel. He is slumped over the steering wheel with his foot still on the gas.

The crosswalk sign changes to walk and Harold moves forward. The Machine begs his attention yet again. 

STAY

Harold misses being plowed in the crosswalk by the Buick by about a foot. He gasps as it rushes by and then smashes into a parked car. Harold is stunned, can barely breathe. The Machine just saved his life.

Back at his lab, he talks to her directly. He is serious but gentle with her.

"You can't do that again. Your job is to protect everyone, not to protect _me_." His selflessness must be instilled in the Machine or it will skew its morality tragically and treat him as precious to the rest of humanity's expense. But this moment is tragic in its own sense. He would be dead or maimed without her, and she valiantly tried again and again to protect him. Now he is changing her so that instinct of care is suppressed.

This is what Finch wants from Reese now, to protect everyone, not _him_. But John is not a machine, his heart cannot be programmed. He will make his own value judgments and choices about the people close to him. 

In the past, Harold purses his lips. "I guess we're going to have to discuss some ground rules."

In the present, Harold is still a hostage, now at a fancy restaurant by the water, forced to listen to Root justify herself as if anything she said would change the facts.

"I think you've got me wrong, Harold. I don't enjoy killing people. But I don't feel very bad about it, either." He is well aware of that last bit.

The look of disgust on his face never wavers. Harold is afraid, but he is sickened by her more than anything.

As Root rambles on about her plan to poison the woman at the next table, Finch can only listen, holding his now bandaged hand up to his lips, hiding as much as is possible in this awful moment.

He watches Root dump some unknown crushed pills into the woman's water glass and moves to warn her as she goes to drink, threats or no, but Root stops him. 

"She'll be just fine. In a month or two. And there are messier ways to do this if you insist." 

He only speaks with his eyes. He knows she is telling the truth. If he wants to keep those around him alive, he has to acquiesce to whatever madness this woman has planned for them.

Finally, a question. "What's she got to do with any of this?"

"We're just an accident, Harold. We're just bad code. But the thing you built... it's perfect. Rational. Beautiful. By design." If it's perfect, it's perfect because Finch made it. The Machine is decent and good because he is.

He leans in. "What I made is just a machine. A system, and that's all."

"I don't think so, Harry. You may have fooled Nathan, but I know the truth." At the mention of Nathan, Harold freezes. She knows far more than he even feared. 

"If you want to make something that understands human behavior, it has to be at least as smart as a human." This is rich coming from a sociopath without the ability to ever truly understand other humans or their emotions and motivations.

"You created an intelligence, a life. And then you ripped out its voice, locked it in a cage, and handed it over to the most laughably corrupt people imaginable." What else was he supposed to have done, he wonders. He tried – and succeeded – at making the Machine a black box no one could penetrate. It can only be observed, never tampered with. The cage is for its protection as much or more as it is humanity's.

The poisoned woman falls to the floor, and Root gets what she wanted out of her purse. Her cellphone makes it simple to message her lover and set up a trap for him.

Back in New York, Reese is so happy now in the car with his new dog, who is also very pleased.

"You don't look like a Butcher."

Leon disagrees, still there, still freaking out in the passenger seat. "It looks exactly like a butcher."

John scratches the dog's ears as it leans next to him. 

"You're a sweetheart. You just need a better name."

Carter calls, and Reese flips back into his serious voice and serious intent. 

At the Nazi building, some tattooed giant is talking to a bleeding AMH with a voice so deep that sounds almost artificially lowered. 

"Those two die tonight."

In the car, Leon wants to go on his own, but Reese refuses.

"Every time I let you go, you almost end up dead."

John has two tasks he is dedicated to right now, and Leon is one of them. The other one aches inside him, an open wound.

"I'm running out of time to find my friend and I've only got one lead left, so you're gonna try very hard not to get killed while I look into it. Do you understand?"

John physically drags him out of the car when Leon refuses to follow, and he leaves the dog in the car with the bag full of Leon's bearer bonds.

In the storage unit, the guy John is looking for is dead. 

"Who did this?"

"Same person who took my friend. He saw her face. She had to kill him."

Reese dumps the body unceremoniously off the chair and demands Leon sit and use the one skill he actually has to follow the money. Unfortunately, all Leon finds is that there's nothing to trace because she paid the man with money she stole from him first.

And John is gutted. This was his last lead. There is nothing left for him to follow to find Finch. Especially when he gets a call from Carter.

Creepy Hersh is haunting the police station, destroying all the evidence Carter was working on in Alicia Corwin's murder. She doesn't know it's him, though. She just knows all her information is gone.

"I'll look into it, but... John, I don't think we have anything else to go on. If Harold is still out there, I don't know how to find him."

John lowers the phone. He has other problems, because the Nazis are back, now on motorcycles, shooting at them.

Carter hears the exchange of gunfire over the line. "John?!"

John and Leon run, dashing down an alley, buying themselves a little time as the Nazis drive past. Gun still in hand, Reese walks toward a security camera. The only resource left is Finch's own creation, programmed to let him go. John looks down at the gun in his hand and makes a decision. He slides it back out of sight and stops there in the middle of the sidewalk.

"What the hell are you doing?" Leon yells, terrified. He tries to look up to see what John is seeing above them, but sees nothing.

"I'm not doing this anymore." Reese draws his line in the sand with the Machine. "I'm not going anywhere until you give me a way to find him."

Leon tries to run, thinking John is just crazy, but he is grabbed and dragged back by the collar. 

"If I'm supposed to keep saving people like this idiot, I want something in return. Otherwise, I'm done."

"Who are you talking to? These guys are going to kill us!" It's god, Leon. John is talking to god.

John is preternaturally calm. "They probably are." 

He's faced down death before, he no longer fears it at all. Before Finch, he would have freely chosen it. He looks at the payphone nearby. If the Machine wants him to save Leon and all those lives to follow, she'd better make her move now, and that is the way.

"So what the hell is this?" Leon begs.

Flat and still, John addresses the camera again. 

"A negotiation." 

With more emotion, he makes his last entreaty to this powerful digital being that protects lives but is forbidden to protect its own creator. "I know you've got your rules, but I'm guessing they don't account for everybody being dead. No one answering your phone calls, no one saving anyone." He shakes his head, his voice drops. "No contingency."

Leon begs and begs, but Reese will not move.

"Do the math and figure out a way to bend your rules, 'cause he's my friend." John's eyes glisten as they look up at nothing and everything. He swallows. His voice is low, scratchy with feeling and memory. "He saved my life. Understand? And I won't do this without him."

The light on the camera comes on. Acknowledgement. John has been heard. Now he waits for an answer.

The motorcycles are coming now, but Reese does not move even an inch. All he does is stare up at the camera, waiting, asking her, demanding her help with his eyes. He would rather die than let Finch go, and he will show her that so she understands.

The light goes back off. A decision. The phone rings. 

It's the garbled recorded voices again, but it's something. However it had to happen, the Machine found a way to allow it. Reese scribbles down the words with the phone propped in the crook of his shoulder. "Thank you," he whispers into the line. 

It is such a strange feeling. He just spoke directly to the world's most powerful artificial intelligence and convinced it to go against its programming. He looks down at the phone in his hand again a moment as if it were incomprehensible to him. Whatever he was just talking to certainly is. 

"Who was that?" Leon asks.

"Long story, let's go." And they're off just in time as the motorcycles and bullets arrive.

In some office in Washington, interchangeable white government men talk on the phone about "the situation" with Alicia Corwin, etc., threatening each other.

Meanwhile, the Nazi giant corners them in a parking garage. John has such bad luck at parking garages.

"Go on, get out of here. I'll keep them busy."

"Yeah, okay." Leon's instinct is always self-preservation first, but he reaches for Reese's arm.

"John?"

"You can thank me later."

John heads out for the fight that can no longer be avoided, but he is as capable as ever, so it starts with him clocking someone on a motorcycle in the face with a steel fire extinguisher. 

At the car, Leon is unlucky enough to find the Nazi giant, who drops him with one hit.

Bear barks and barks in the car, but he's useless locked inside.

Leon is about to get his face punched inside out, but then Reese is there, walking out cooly into the night.

"Hey!" he shouts. The Nazi giant stops with his fist in the air. "Pick on someone your own size." But then John sizes up his new ridiculously huge enemy. "Or... someone... a little closer to it."

He tries to do his normally hyper-effective fighting techniques, but they're useless against this slab of a man in black leather. John gets tossed against the car. He can partially hold him off briefly, but that's the best he can do. He's being beaten badly. Luckily the Nazi giant decides to take this moment to speechify. 

"You're an embarrassment to your race. When we rise up–" And he promptly takes a riot control grenade directly to the spine. He falls like a bag of bricks.

Above John, Carter is there, looking proud, holding the launcher. This time, she was able to save him on the roof of a parking garage.

"I've been meaning to give this back to you," she says as she walks up with the enormous duffle bag of various weaponry. The statement could just as easily refer to the favor of keeping him alive this time. 

He touches her hand as he takes the guns. John often uses subtle touch to express his feelings. "Thank you."

Lionel is there too. "Never thought I'd see you almost lose."

"Yeah, I wasn't losing. I was just resting." Fusco smiles.

Reese lets the dog out of the car and crouches to pet him. "At least somebody's happy."

Leon discovers the dog has destroyed all of his stolen paper. So much for all that.

"My money. It ate the bearer bonds."

John gets an idea. "That's it. We'll call him Bear."

"Look at it this way. You're broke, but you're alive. Unless, of course, you lied to those guys about losing the rest of their money."

"No, um, I'm pretty certain." John holds up a finger. "80% certain. Maybe 75% certain."

Reese walks away with Bear. Leon calls out to him again. "Your friend..." John turns around. "I hope you find him. He's lucky to have you." He truly is. John gives Leon the slightest nod back, and he is gone.

Back at the library, the new Dewey Decimal System numbers reveal a missing persons case, a young girl. The books are stacked on the desk. Camera Obscura de L'Idéologie, Deterministic Chaos: An Introduction, Ayacucho Quechua Grammar and Dictionary. It is an interesting set that feels symbolic. A way of seeing indirectly, a system to understand order from seeming randomness, and a method of translating a barely known language.

At Carter's, she jumps when she turns a corner and big Bear is on her sofa. He has his tongue out and ears up, happy. His ugly chain is gone.

"Morning," Reese says. He's carrying luggage.

She scoffs with a laugh. She's still just buttoning her cuffs. "You gotta be kidding me."

"I got a lead on Finch," he says, absolutely not kidding. He hands over a folded paper.

"You know where our mystery woman is headed?"

"No, but I think I found out where she's from. Pack your bags, Carter. We're going to Texas."

She doesn't look thrilled at this prospect, but it's the right thing to do. She will do it.

In hostage hell with Root, Finch never stops staring at his captor with that same frozen mistrust and disgust.

"You must be starving. Our friend will be here shortly and then I'll fix you something to eat." He'd rather starve, thanks.

She's doing her nails for some reason. Finch looks around the room. There's a picture of the poisoned woman. Finally he speaks.

"I have no way of accessing it, you know. I made sure of that."

She tells him again of her talent for sniffing out flaws.

"Why? What could you possibly want from it?"

"The same thing you did. You may have told yourself you were helping people, but the real reason you built the machine is because the world is boring. Human beings have come as far as we're gonna go. I want to see what happens next."

This is where again, Root cannot conceive of the truth because she is too much of a sociopath. Finch really did build it to help people, because Finch has altruism, something she cannot fathom, at least not yet. He taught the Machine to understand it. In time, he will teach Root as well. But that is a long way from here. 

He sees her preparing a syringe. Nothing good can come from that. The crease in his brow deepens.

"You're right, you and I are alike... in many ways, not that I'd care to admit it." Sure, he often finds people incomprehensibly dumb and dull, but that doesn't mean he is fine with watching them die, and it isn't his motivation for any of this. "I spent years wondering how people could be so cruel... petty, so selfish. And then I'd think about how you could _change_ them." He says it with contempt, for himself and for the world. " _Fix_ them. And that's why I've sealed up the machine. Not to protect it from the people I was giving it to... to protect it from me, from people like us, from the things we'd do with it." Finch, as distant as he feels from humanity, is still only human himself, weak and venal, but with the dangerous talent of being able to wreak havoc with what he has made.

"That's why I'll never help you get control of it." Total defiance. Finch is physically weak, but incredibly emotionally strong. 

"I know. You won't have to. Because you see, Harold, I don't want to control your machine." Root rises with the syringe. Noise from outside indicates someone coming. The poisoned woman's boyfriend arrives and gets a syringe to the neck before he drops to the floor. "I just want to set it free."

* * *

#### Thoughts

  * How would this show work now with next to no payphones?
  * How does anyone remember what the Machine says? I feel like there would be a lot of information loss here, since the message is only given once and it is composed of seemingly random words.
  * Now we deal with Root, who I personally will eventually come to accept but never love. I know this puts me in the minority. Here, her evilness is so theatrical it's a bit hard to take. But she is the first real window into the Machine as a character we get, so this is how we move forward.
  * Blackjack is a game of odds, and no predictive system can possibly be perfect without exact knowledge of the cards. Makes for a cool scene, though.
  * What did the Machine do to allow itself to help John?
    * One theory could be that it decides since it trades in information about people whose lives are in danger through violence, it could stretch that window to include those whose lives were lost to violence but still need to be helped today.
    * A more interesting theory for the character of the Machine is that she cannot tolerate the idea that she would be left alone with the irrelevant list, a never ending chain of lives she can only watch be lost.
    * The scenario John threatened her with would also mean she would be left no one at all, no one to contact, no one who cares about her as an entity. The only people in the world who she has a real connection in her life would be gone, and her programming will not allow her to find others. John threatened her with permanent empty loneliness.



#### Prompts

  * This madness from Leon's perspective
  * Reese realizes Finch is the person who connects him to the world now. He is different for that. It's not one person ever in your life, it's real care and trust. It's love.
  * Finch, as a programmer, wants to know how Reese got the Machine to help him when he explicitly programmed it not to. John has to explain how he basically threatened to kill himself (and a number).
    * Maybe over that drink. Finch realizes, fairly drunk, that the Machine must have helped find him. Only it knew at all where he was. So how did that happen?
    * (I actually took this prompt for myself when I wrote these notes. My version ended up in [chapter 5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22174510/chapters/53947096) of my story [If Only for Tonight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22174510/chapters/52935988).)




End file.
